MR. FLICKER AT HOME
MR. FLICKER AT HOME
Beside the ruins of a spring-house, a gray bird with a tilting tail said, “Phœ, bee-bee, bee.” It was the little phœbe, so glad to be back that he stuttered when he called his name. Thereafter the Captain was moved to relate another anecdote. It seemed a friend of his had stopped a pair of robins from nesting over a hammock hung under an apple tree, by nailing a stuffed cat right beside their bough. Whereupon the two robins, when they came the next morning, fled with loud chirps of dismay. When two phœbes started to build on his porch, he tried the same plan. He was called out of town the next day, and when he came back a week later he found that the phœbes had deserted their old nest. They had however built a new one—on top of the cat’s head.
As the Band swung back into the far end of Roberts Road, the Captain’s eye caught the gleam of a half-healed notch which he had cut in a pin-oak sapling the year before, at the top of a high bank, to mark the winter-quarters of a colony of blacksnakes. He halted the Band, and one by one they clambered up the slope, stopping puffingly at the first ledge, and searching the withered grass and gray rocksabove for any black, sinister shapes. Suddenly Honey did a remarkable performance in the standing-back-broad-jump, finishing by rolling clear to the foot of the bank. Right where he had stood lay a hale and hearty specimen of a blacksnake nearly five feet long. Evidently it had only just awakened from its winter-sleep, for there were clay-smears on the smooth, satiny scales, and even a patch of clay between the golden, unwinking eyes. Only the flickering of a long, black, forked tongue showed that his snakeship was alive. Then it was that the Captain lived up to the requirements of his position by picking up that blacksnake with what he fondly believed to be an air of unconcern. He showed the awe-stricken Band that the pupil of the snake’s eye was a circle, instead of the oval which is the hallmark of that fatal family of pit-vipers to which the rattlesnake, copperhead, and moccasin belong.
“If you have any doubt about a snake,” lectured the Captain, “pick it up and look it firmly in the eye. If the pupil is oval—drop it. Perhaps, however,” he went on reflectively, “it would be better to get someone else to do the picking-up part.”
When the Band learned from the Captain that it was the creditable custom of the Zoölogical Gardens to give free entry to such as bore with them as a gift a snake of size, their views toward the captive changed considerably. Said snake was now legal tender, to be cherished accordingly. It was the resourceful First Lieutenant Trottie who solved all difficulties in regard to transportation. He hurriedly removeda stocking, and the snake was inserted therein, giving the stocking that knobbed, lumpy appearance usually seen in such articles only at Christmas time.
THE MOURNING DOVE ON HER NEST
THE MOURNING DOVE ON HER NEST
From the Den the Band marched to a bowl-shaped meadow not far from old Tory Bridge, under which a Revolutionary soldier hid with his horse while his pursuers thundered overhead, well-nigh a century and a half ago. On three sides of the field the green turf sloped down to a long level stretch, covered by a thin growth of different trees, centring on a thicket through which trickled a little stream. Near the fence on a white-oak tree some ill-tempered owner had fastened a fierce sign which read: “Keep out. Trespassers will be shot without notice.” The cross owner had been gone many a long year, but the sign still stood, and it always gave the Band a delightful thrill to read it.
At the edge of the grove the Captain halted them all.
“Comrades,” he said in a whisper, “I have heard rumors that there is a clue to the treasure hidden in the sign-tree.”
It was enough. With one accord the Band sprang upon that defenceless tree. Some searched among its gnarled roots. Others examined the lower branches. It was Henny-Penny, however, who boosted by Alice-Palace, fumbled back of the threatening old sign and drew out a crumpled slip of grimy paper. On it had been laboriously inscribed in some red fluid, presumably blood, a skull and cross-bones. Underneath, in a very bad hand, was written: “Bythe roots of the nearest black-walnut tree. Captain Kidd.”
There was a moment’s check. It was Honey who recognized the tree by its crooked clutching twigs, and found at its roots a crumpled piece of paper which said: “Go to the nearest tulip tree. Blackbeard the Pirate.” It was Trottie who remembered that a tulip tree has square leaves, and it was he who found the message which read: “I am buried under a stone which stands between a spice-bush and a white-ash tree.” They all knew the spice-bush, with its brittle twigs and pungent bark which was made to be nibbled, and under the stone they found a note which said: “Look in the crotch of a dogwood tree. If you will listen you will hear its bark”; which made the Band laugh like anything.
The last message of all read: “I am swinging in a vireo’s nest on the branch of a sour-gum tree.” That was a puzzle which held the Band hunting like beagles in check for a long time. Corporal Alice-Palace at last spied the bleached little basket-nest at the end of a low limb. Inside was a bit of paper which, when unfolded, seemed to be entirely blank. So were the face of the Band as they looked. It was the Captain again who saved the day.
“I have heard,” he whispered, “that sometimes pirates write in lemon-juice, which makes an invisible ink that needs heat to bring it out. Like the Gold-Bug, you know.”
It was enough. In less than sixty seconds, sun time, the Band had built a tiny fire after the mostapproved Indian method, and as soon as it began to crackle, the paper was held as close to the blaze as possible. The Captain had the right idea. As the paper bent under the heat, on its white surface brown tracings appeared, which slowly formed letters and then words, until they could all read: “I am in the hidey-hole of the chimney of the Haunted House. The Treasure.”
For a moment the Band stared at each other in silence. They had made a special study of pirates, black, white, yellow, and mixed. Haunted houses, however, were beyond their bailiwick. It spoke well for the iron discipline and high hearts of the company that not one of them faltered. Led by dauntless Sergeant Henny-Penny, they crossed the creek in single file on a tippy tree-trunk. Half hidden in the bushes above, a gaunt stone house stared down at them out of empty window-sockets like a skull. Through the thicket and straight up the slope the Band charged, with such speed that the Captain was hard put to keep up with his gallant officers. They never halted until they stood at the threshold of the House itself. Under the bowed lintel the Band marched, and never halted until they reached the vast fireplace which took in a whole side of the room. The floorings of the House had gone, and nothing but the naked beams remained, save for a patch of warped boards far up against the stone chimney where the attic used to be. It was plainly there that they must look for the hidey-hole.
The Captain showed his followers how in one ofthe window-ledges the broken ends of the joists made a rude ladder. Up this the Band clambered to the first tier of joists, without any mishap save that the Captain’s hat fell off and landed in front of the fireplace.
As they all roosted like chickens on the beams, there sounded a footstep just outside. The Band stood stony still and held their breath. Through the dim doorway came the furtive figure of a man. In one hand he carried a basket, while the other was clinched on a butcher-knife well fitted for dark and desperate deeds. Although the basket seemed to be filled with dandelion greens, no one could tell what dreadful, dripping secret might be concealed underneath. For a minute the stranger looked uneasily around the shadowy room, and when his eye caught sight of the Captain’s hat, he started back and peered into every corner, while the Band stood taut and tense just over his unsuspecting head. At last, however, evidently convinced that the hat was ownerless and abandoned, he picked it up and, taking off his own battered, shapeless head-covering, started to try on the Captain’s cherished felt. Then it was that the latter acted. Bending noiselessly down until his head was hardly a foot above the unwary wanderer’s ear, he shouted in a deep, fierce, growly voice which the Band had never suspected him of having:—
“Drop that hat! Run for your life!”
The stranger obeyed both of these commands to the letter. Throwing away the hat as if it were redhot, he dashed out of the doorway and sprinted down the slope, scattering dandelion greens at every jump, and disappeared in the thicket beyond. Although the Captain laughed and laughed until he nearly fell off his beam, the rest of the Band feared the worst.
“He looked exactly like Black Dog,” murmured Honey in a low voice.
“Yes,” chimed in Trottie, “kind of slinky and tallowy.”
Whereupon, in spite of the Captain’s reassuring words, they made haste to find the Treasure, fearing lest at any moment they might hear the shrill and dreadful whistle which sounded on the night when Billy Bones died. Sidling along the beams in the wake of the Captain, they came to what remained of a crumbling staircase. One by one they passed up this until they reached the bit of attic flooring which they had seen from below. Sure enough, in one of the soft mica-schist rocks of the chimney, someone had chiseled a deep and delightful hidey-hole.
It was Lieutenant Trottie who, by virtue of his rank, first explored the unknown depths and drew therefrom a heavy, grimy canvas bag. When he undid the draw-string, a rolling mass of gold and silver nuggets rattled down on the dry boards, while the Band gasped at the sight of so much sudden wealth. A moment later a series of crunching noises showed that the treasure-hunters had discovered that said gold and silver were only thin surface foils, each concealing a luscious heart of sweet chocolate. The Captain met their inquiring glances unmoved.
“It only shows,” he explained, “what thoughtful chaps pirates have become. They knew you couldn’t use a bag of doubloons nowadays, but that sweet chocolate always comes in handy.”
Hidden treasure is not a thing to be investigated scientifically, nor can anything restore a glamour once gone. Perhaps so unconsciously reasoned the Band as they followed the Captain down the steep stairs and the steeper ladder. Through the lilac bushes he led them around to the far side of the House. There the stairway had disappeared, and most of the sagging floor-beams were broken. A limb of a nearby apple tree had thrust its way above the lilac thicket, until it nearly touched the ledge of a window half hidden by the boughs.
Up the apple tree the Captain clambered, followed by the Band, and walking out on the limb, led the way across the window-ledge into a tiny room. For some unknown reason, amid the general wreckage and ruin of the House, this room still stood untouched and with its flooring unbroken. Even the walls, plastered a deep blue, showed scarcely a crack on their surface. Best of all, fronting the open dormer of the window, was a long, deep settee, with curly, carved legs and a bent, comfortable back. Its seat was so wide that the Corporal’s legs stuck out straight in front of her when she sat down with the rest of the Band at the end of the line.
Framed in the broken sheathing and bleached stone of the window-opening, there stretched out before them a vista of little valleys and roundwooded hills, all feathery green with the new leaves of early spring. The Band felt that they occupied a strong and strategic position. A drop of some twenty feet sheer from the broken flooring behind them to the ground protected them against any rear attack, and the only entrance to their refuge was so shadowed and hidden by rose-red and snow-white apple-blossoms that it would be a cunning and desperate foe indeed who could find or would storm their fastness.
With safety once secured, it was the unanimous feeling of the whole company that luncheon was the next and most pressing engagement for their consideration. An investigation of the commissary showed that the Quartermaster-General had merited promotion and decoration and citation and various other military honors, by reason of the unsurpassable quality of the rations for which she was responsible. When these were topped off by the Treasure for dessert, it was felt by the whole Band that this was a Day which thereafter would rank in their memories with Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and press hard upon the heels even of Christmas Day itself.
After a rapturous half-hour undisturbed by any desultory and unnecessary conversation, followed a chapter in the Adventures of Great-great Uncle Jake. Said relative had been a distant collateral connection of the Captain, and had fought through the Revolution, and, in the opinion of the Band, next to General Washington, had probably been most nearly responsible for the final success of thepatriot arms. It was Uncle Jake who made General Putnam get off his horse into the mud and give the countersign. It was Uncle Jake who shot the Hessian who used to stand on an earthwork and make insulting gestures every morning toward the Continental camp. It was Uncle Jake again who, when he was captured, broke his way out of the Hulks, and swam ashore one stormy night. To-day the Captain had bethought himself of a rather unusual experience which Uncle Jake once had while hunting bears.
“It was during a February thaw,” he began. “Uncle Jake was coming down Pond Hill, when he stepped into a mushy place back of a patch of bushes, and sank in up to his waist. He felt something soft under his feet and stamped down hard. A second later,” continued the Captain impressively, “he wished he hadn’t. Something rose right up underneath him, and the next thing poor old Uncle Jake knew, he was astride a big black bear, going down hill like mad—riding bear-back as it were. You see,” went on the Captain hurriedly, “Uncle Jake had stepped into a bear-hole and waked up a bear by stamping on his back. He was in a bad fix. He didn’t want to stay on and he didn’t dare to get off. So what do you suppose he did?”
“Rode him up a tree,” hazarded Henny-Penny.
“No,” said the Captain. “He stuck on until they got to level ground. Then Uncle Jake drew his hunting-knife and stabbed the old bear dead right through his neck, and afterwards made an overcoat out of its skin.”
The Band felt that they could bear nothing further in the story line after this anecdote, and the Treasure having gone the way of all treasures, the march back was begun. It was the Captain who, on this homeward trip, discovered another treasure. They were passing a marshy swale of land, where a little stream trickled through a tangle of trees. From out of the thicket came an unknown bird-call. “Pip, pip, pip,” it sounded. As they peered among the bushes, on a low branch the Captain saw six strange birds, all gold and white and black, with thick, white bills. Never had the Band seen him so excited before. He told them that the strangers were none other than a company of the rare evening grosbeaks, which had come down from the far Northwest, which had never before been reported in that county, and which few bird-students ever meet in a whole lifetime, although he had found a flock in New Jersey a few months before. For long the Band stood and watched them. They flew down on the ground and began feeding on cherry-pits, cracking the stones in their great bills. At times they would fly up into a tree and sidle along the limbs like little parrots. The females had mottled black-and-white wings and gray backs and breasts, while the males had golden breasts and backs, with wings half velvet-black and half ivory-white.
For a long time they all watched the birds and made notes, until the dimming light warned them that it was time to be on their way. In the twilight the hylas called across the marshes, and from uplandmeadows scores of meadow-larks cried, “Swee-eet, swee-eet.” Westering down the sky sank the crescent new moon, with blazing Jupiter in her train. As the Band climbed Violet Hill and swung into the long lane which ended in home, they heard the last and loveliest bird-song of that whole dear day. Through the gathering darkness came a sweet and dreamy croon, the love-song of the little owl. Even as they listened, the distant door of the house opened and, framed in the lamp-light, waiting for them, was Mother, the best treasure of all.
My path led down the side of the lonely Barrack, as the coffin-shaped hill had been named. There I had been exploring a little mountain stream, which I had fondly and mistakenly hoped might prove to be a trout-brook. The winding wood-road passed through dim aisles of whispering pine trees. At a steep place, a bent green stem stretched half across the path, and from it swayed a rose-red flower like a hollow sea-shell carved out of jacinth. For the first time I looked down on the moccasin flower or pink lady-slipper (Cypripedium acaule), the largest of our native orchids.
For a long time I hung over the flower. Its discovery was a great moment, one of those that stand out among the thirty-six-odd million of minutes that go to make up a long life. For the first time my eyes were opened to see what a lovely thing a flower could be. In the half-light I knelt on the soft pine-needles and studied long the hollow purple-pink shell, veined with crimson, set between two other tapering petals of greenish-purple, while a sepal of the same color curved overhead. The whole flower swayed between two large curved, grooved leaves.
Leaving the path, I began to hunt for others under the great trees, and at last came upon a wholecongregation nodding and swaying in long rows around the vast trunks of white pines which were old trees when this country was born.
From that day I became a hunter of orchids and a haunter of far-away forests and lonely marshlands and unvisited hill-tops and mountain-sides. Wherever the lovely hid-folk dwell, there go I. They are strange flowers, these orchids. When first they were made out of sunshine, mist, and dew, every color was granted them save one. They may wear snow-white, rose-red, pearl and gold, green and white, purple and gold, ivory and rose, yellow, gold and brown, every shade of crimson and pink. Only the blues are denied them.
Since that first great day I have found the moccasin flower in many places—on the top of bare hills and in the black-lands of northern Canada, where, four feet under the peat, the ice never melts even in midsummer. Once I saw it by a sphagnum bog where I was hunting for the almost unknown nest of the Tennessee warbler, amid clouds of black flies and mosquitoes that stung like fire. Again, on the tip-top of Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania, I had just found the long-sought nest of a chestnut-sided warbler. Even as I admired the male bird, with his white cheeks and golden head and chestnut-streaked sides, and the four eggs like flecked pink pearls, my eye caught a sight which brought me to my knees regardless for a moment of nest, eggs, birds, and all. Among rose-hearted twin-flowers and wild lilies of the valley and snowy dwarf cornels swung three moccasin flowersin a line. The outer ones, like the guard-stars of great Altair, were light in color. Between them gleamed, like the Eagle Star itself, a flower of deepest rose, an unearthly crystalline color, like a rain-drenched jacinth.
Another time, at the crest of a rattlesnake den, I found two of these pink pearls of the woods swinging above the velvet-black coils of a black timber rattlesnake. I picked my way down the mountain-side, with Beauty in one hand and Death in the other, as I romantically remarked to the unimpressed snake-collector who was waiting for me with an open gunny-sack.
Then there was the day in the depths of the pine-barrens, where stunted, three-leaved pitch pines took the place of the towering, five-leaved white pine of the North. The woods looked like a shimmering pool of changing greens lapping over a white sand-land that had been thrust up from the South into the very heart of the North. I followed a winding wood-path along the high bank of a stream stained brown and steeped sweet with a million cedar-roots. A mountain laurel showed like a beautiful ghost against the dark water—a glory of white, pink-flecked flowers.
Through dripping branches of withewood and star-leaved sweet-gum saplings the path twisted. Suddenly, at the very edge of the bank, out of a mass of hollow, crimson-streaked leaves filled with clear water, swung two glorious blossoms. Wine-red, aquamarine, pearl-white, and pale gold they gleamed andnodded from slender stems. It was the pitcher-plant, which I had never seen in blossom before.
From the stream the hidden path wound through thicket after thicket, sweet as spring, with the fragrance of the wild magnolia and the spicery of the gray-green bayberry. Its course was marked with white sand, part of the bed of some sea forgotten a hundred thousand years ago. By the side of the path showed the vivid crimson-lake leaves of the wild ipecac, with its strange green flowers; while everywhere, as if set in snow, gleamed the green-and-gold of the Hudsonia, the barrens-heather. The plants looked like tiny cedar trees laden down with thickly set blossoms of pure gold, which the wind spilled in little yellow drifts on the white sand. In the distance, through the trees, were glimpses of meadows, hazy-purple with the blue toad-flax. Beside the path showed here and there the pale gold of the narrow-leaved sundrops, with deep-orange stamens. Beyond were masses of lambskill, with its fatal leaves and crimson blossoms.
On and on the path led, past jade-green pools in which gleamed buds of the yellow pond-lily, like lumps of floating gold. Among them were blossoms of the paler golden-club, which looked like the tongue of a calla lily. At last the path stretched straight toward the flat-topped mound that showed dim and fair through the low trees. The woods became still. Even the Maryland yellow-throat stopped singing, the prairie warbler no longer drawled his lazy notes, and the chewink, black and white and red all over,like the newspaper in the old conundrum, stopped calling his name from the thickets and singing, “Drink your tea!”
I knew that at last I had come upon a fairy hill, such an one wherein the shepherd heard a host of tiny voices singing a melody so haunting sweet that he always after remembered it, and which has since come down to us of to-day as the tune of Robin Adair. Listen as I would, however, there was no sound from the depths of this hill. Perhaps the sun was too high, for the fairy-folk sing best in late twilight or early dawn.
The mound, like all fairy hills, was guarded. The path ran into a tangle of sand-myrtle, with vivid little oval green leaves and feathery white, pink-centred blossoms. Just beyond stood a bush of poison-sumac. Pushing aside the fierce branches, I went unscathed up the mound. At its very edge was another sentry. From under my feet sounded a deep, fierce hiss, and there across the path stretched the great body of a pine snake fully six feet long, all cream-white and umber-brown. Raising its strange pointed head, with its gold and black eyes, it hissed fearsomely. I had learned, however, that a pine snake’s hiss is worse than its bite and, when I poked its rough, mottled body with my foot, it gave up pretending to be a dangerous snake and lazily moved off to some spot where it would not be disturbed by intruding humans.
The pyxies had carpeted the side of the mound thick with their wine-red and green moss, starred withhundreds of flat, five-petaled white blossoms. This celebrated pyxie moss is not a moss at all, but a tiny shrub. Near the summit of the mound the path was lost in a foam of the blue, lilac, and white butterfly blossoms of the lupine. Little clouds of fragrance drifted through the air, as the wind swayed rows and rows of the transparent bells of the leucothoe. Beyond the lupine stood a rank of dazzling white turkey-beards, the xerophyllum of the botanists. The inmost circle of the mound was carpeted with dry gray reindeer moss, and before me, in the centre of the circle, drooped on slender stems seven rose-red moccasin flowers.
They have sought him high, they have sought him low,They have sought him over down and lea;They have found him by the milk-white thornThat guards the gates o’ Faerie.’Twas bent beneath and blue above,Their eyes were held that they might not seeThe kine that grazed beneath the knowes;Oh, they were the Queens o’ Faerie.
They have sought him high, they have sought him low,They have sought him over down and lea;They have found him by the milk-white thornThat guards the gates o’ Faerie.
They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
That guards the gates o’ Faerie.
’Twas bent beneath and blue above,Their eyes were held that they might not seeThe kine that grazed beneath the knowes;Oh, they were the Queens o’ Faerie.
’Twas bent beneath and blue above,
Their eyes were held that they might not see
The kine that grazed beneath the knowes;
Oh, they were the Queens o’ Faerie.
If only that day my eyes had been loosed like those of True Thomas, I too might have seen the fairy queens in all their regal beauty.
Wherever it be found, the moccasin flower will always hold me by its sheer beauty. Yet to my memory none of them can approach the loveliness of that cloistered colony which I first found in the pine wood so many years ago. Year after year I would visitthem. Then came a time when for five years I was not able to travel to their home. When, at last, I made my pilgrimage to where they grew, there was no cathedral of mighty green arches roofed by a shimmering June sky; there were no aisles of softly singing trees; and there were no rows of sweet faces looking up at me and waiting for my coming; only heaps of sawdust and hideous masses of lopped branches showed where a steam sawmill had cut its deadly way. Underneath the fallen dying boughs which had once waved above the world, companioned only by sky and sun and the winds of heaven, I found one last starveling blossom left of all her lovely company. Protected no longer by the sheltering boughs, she was bleached nearly white by the sun, and her stem crept crookedly along the ground underneath the mass of brush and litter which had once been a carpet of gold. Never since that day have I visited the place where my friends wait for me no more.
It was another orchid which, for eleven years, on the last day of every June, made me travel two hundred miles due north. From an old farmhouse on the edge of the Berkshires I would start out in the dawn-dusk on the first day of every July. The night-hawks would still be twanging above me as I followed, before sunrise, a dim silent road over the hills all sweet with the scent of wild-grape and the drugged perfume of chestnut tassels. At last I would reach a barway sunken in masses of sweet-fern and shaded by thickets of alder and witch-hazel.There a long-forgotten wood-road led to my Land of Heart’s Desire. Parting the branches, I would step into the hush of the sleeping wood, pushing my way through masses of glossy, dark-green Christmas ferns and clumps of feathery, tossing maidenhair. Black-throated blue warblers sang above, and that ventriloquist, the oven bird, would call from apparently a long way off, “Teacher, teacher, teacher,” ending with a tremendous “TEACH!” right under my feet.
At last there would loom up through the green tangle a squat broken white pine. That was my landmark. I would push my way through a tangle of sanicle, and beyond the trunk of a slim elm catch a gleam of white in the dusk. There, all rose-red and snow-white, with parted lips, waited for me the queen flower of the woods, theCypripedium reginæ, the loveliest of all our orchids. Two narrow, white, beautiful curved petals stretched out at right angles, while above them towered a white sepal, the three together making a snowy cross. Below this cross hung the lip of the flower, a milk-white hollow shell fully an inch across and an inch deep, veined with crystalline pink which deepened into purple, growing more intense in color until the veins massed in a network of vivid violet just under the curved lips kissed by many a wandering wood-bee. Inside the shell were spots of intense purple, showing through the transparent walls. The other two white sepals were joined together and hung as a single one behind the lip.
PINK AND WHITE LADY SLIPPERS (Cypripedium reginæ)
PINK AND WHITE LADY SLIPPERS (Cypripedium reginæ)
I had first found this orchid while hunting for a veery’s nest in the marsh. At that time nothing was showing except the leaves, which grow on tall, round, downy stems. They were beautifully curved at the margin, and were of a brilliant green, a little lighter on the under side than on the upper, and, at first sight, much like the leaves of the well-known marsh hellebore. That day was the beginning of a ten-year tryst which I kept every summer with this wood-queen. Then, alas, I lost her!
It came about thus. The marsh in which she hid was part of a thousand acres owned by a friend of mine, who was an enthusiastic and rival flower-hunter. Each year, when I visited my colony of these queen orchids, I sent him one with my compliments and the assurance that the flower belonged to him because it was found on his land. I accompanied these gifts with various misleading messages as to where they grew. He would hunt and hunt, but find nothing but exasperation. Finally, he bribed me, with an apple-wood corner cupboard I had long coveted, to show him the place. It was not fifty yards from the road, and when I took him to it he was overcome with emotion.
“I’ll bet that I have tramped a hundred miles,” he said plaintively, “through every spot on this farm except this one, looking for this flower. Nobody who knew anything about botany would ever think of looking here.”
The next year my wood-lady did not meet me, nor the next, and I strongly suspect that she hasbeen transplanted to some secret spot known to my unscrupulous botanical friend alone. Moreover, he has never yet paid me that corner cupboard.
I never saw the flower again until last summer I visited a marsh in northern New Jersey, where I had been told by another orchid-hunter that it grew. This marsh I was warned was a dangerous one. Cattle and men, too, in times past have perished in its depths. For eight unexplored miles it stretched away in front of me. After many wanderings I at length found my way to Big Spring, a murky, malevolent pool set in dark woods, with the marsh stretching away beyond.
Not far away, in a limestone cliff, I came upon a deep burrow, in front of which was a sinister pile of picked bones of all sizes and shapes. The sight suggested delightful possibilities. Panthers, wolves, ogres—anything might belong to such a pile of bones as that. I knew, however, that the last New Jersey wolf was killed a century or so ago. The burrow was undoubtedly too small for a panther, or even an undersized ogre. Accordingly I was compelled reluctantly to assign the den to the more commonplace bay-lynx, better known as the wild-cat.
On these limestone rocks I found the curious walking-fern, which loves limestone and no other. Both of the cliff brakes were there, too—the slender, with its dark, fragile, appealing beauty, and its hardier sister, the winter-brake, whose leathery fronds are of a strange blue-green, a color not found in any other plant. Then there was the rattlesnake fern,a lover of deep and dank woods, with its golden-yellow seed-cluster, or ‘rattle,’ growing from the centre of its fringed leaves. The oddest of all the ferns was the maidenhair spleen-wort, whose tiny leaves are of the shape of those of the well-known maidenhair fern. When they are exposed to bright sunlight, all the fertile leaves which have seeds on their surface suddenly begin to move, and for three or four minutes vibrate back and forth as rapidly as the second-hand of a watch.
Farther and farther I pushed on into the treacherous marsh, picking my way from tussock to tussock. Now and then my foot would slip into black, quivering mire, thinly veiled by marsh-grasses. When this happened, the whole swamp would shake and chuckle and lap at the skull-shaped tussocks and the bleached skeletons of drowned trees which showed here and there. At last, when I had almost given up hope, I came upon a clump of the regal flowers growing, not in the swamp itself, but on a shaded bank sloping down from the encircling woods. Three of the plants had two flowers each, the rest only one. Among these was a single blossom, pure white without a trace of pink or purple. Although it was only the thirtieth of June, several of the flowers were already slightly withered and past their prime, showing that this orchid is at its best in New Jersey in the middle of June, rather than the end of the month, as in Connecticut. The perfect flowers were beautiful orchids, and had a rich fragrance which I had never noticed in my Connecticutspecimens. Yet, in some way, to me they lacked the charm and loveliness of my lost flowers of the North.
It was a cold May day. The Ornithologist and myself were climbing Kent Mountain, along with Jim Pan, the last of the Pequots. Whenever Jim drank too much hard cider, which was as often as he could get it, he would give terrible war-whoops and tell how many palefaces his ancestors had scalped. He would usually end by threatening to do some free-hand scalping on his own account—but he never did. He had a son named Tin Pan, who never talked unless he had something to say, which was not more than once or twice during the year.
The two lived all alone, in a little cabin on the slope of Kent Mountain. On the outside of Jim’s door some wag once painted a skull and crossbones, one night when Jim was away on a hunt for some of the aforesaid hard cider. When the Last of the Pequots came back and saw what had been done, he swore mightily that he would leave said insignia there until he could wash them out with the heart’s blood of the gifted artist. They still show faintly on the door, although Jim has slept for many a year in the little Indian cemetery on the mountain, beside his great-aunt Eunice who lived to be one hundred and four years old. Lest it may appear that Jim was an unduly fearsome Indian, let me hasten to add that there was never a kinder, happier, or more untruthful Pequot from the beginning to the end of that long-lost tribe.
On that day the Ornithologist and myself were on our way to a rattlesnake den, the secret of which had been in the Pan family for some generations. In past years Jim’s forbears had done a thriving business in selling skins and rattlesnake oil, in the days when the rattlesnake shared with the skunk the honor of providing an unwilling cure for rheumatism. Our path led up through masses of color. There was the pale pure pink of the crane’s-bill or wild geranium, the yellow adder’s tongue, and the faint blue-and-white porcelain petals of the hepatica, with cluster after cluster of the snowy, golden-hearted bloodroot whose frail blossoms last but for a day.
That very morning a long-delayed warbler-wave was breaking over the mountain, and the Ornithologist could hardly contain himself as he watched the different varieties pass by. I recall that we scored over twenty different kinds of warblers between dawn and dark, and I saw for the first time the Wilson’s black-cap, with its bright yellow breast and tiny black crown, and the rare Cape May warbler, with its black-streaked yellow underparts and orange-red cheeks. The richly dressed and sombre black-throated blue and bay-breasted were among the crowd, while black-throated greens, myrtles, magnolias, chestnut-sided, blackpolls, Canadians, redstarts, with their fan-shaped tails, and Blackburnians, with their flaming throats and breasts glowing like live coals, went by in a never-ending procession.
All the way Jim kept up a steady flow of anecdote.I can remember only one, a blood-curdling story about a man from Bridgeport, name not given, who caught a rattlesnake while on a hunt with Jim, but who let go while attempting to put it into the bag, whereupon the rattlesnake bit him as it dropped.
“Did he die?” queried the writer and the Ornithologist in chorus.
“No,” said Jim proudly; “Tin and I saved his life.”
“Whiskey?” ventured the writer.
“Not for snake-bites,” responded Jim simply.
“Well, how was it?” persisted the Ornithologist, hoping to learn of some mysterious Indian remedy.
“Well,” said Jim, stretching out his tremendous arms like a great bear, “I held him tight and Tin here burned the place out. It took two matches and he yelled somethin’ terrible. I told him we were savin’ his life, but the fool said he would rather die of snake-bite than be burned to death. You wouldn’t suppose a grown man would make such a fuss over two little matches.”
Finally, we reached the Den, a ledge of rocks near the top of the mountain, where for some unknown reason all the rattlesnakes for miles around were accustomed to hibernate during the winter and to remain for some weeks in the late spring before scattering through the valley. The Ornithologist and I fell unobtrusively to the rear, while the dauntless Pan led the van with a crotched stick. Suddenly Jim thrust one foot up into the air like a toe-dancer, and pirouetted with amazing rapidity on the other. He had been in the very act of stepping over a smallhuckleberry-bush, when he noted under its lee a rattlesnake in coil, about the size of a peck measure—as pretty a death-trap as was ever set in the woods. By the time I got there, Jim had pinned the hissing heart-shaped head down with his forked stick, while the bloated, five-foot body was thrashing through the air in circles, the rattles whirring incessantly.
“Grab him just back of the stick,” panted Jim, bearing down with all his weight, “and put him in the bag.”
I paused.
“You’re not scared, are you?” he inquired; while Tin, who had hurried up with a gunny-sack, regarded me reproachfully.
“Certainly not,” I assured him indignantly, “but I don’t want to be selfish. Let Tin do it.”
“No,” said Jim firmly, “you’re company. Tin can pick up rattlesnakes any day.”
“Well, how about my friend?” I rejoined weakly.
The Ornithologist, who had been watching the scene from the far background, spoke up for himself.
“I wouldn’t touch that damn snake,” he said earnestly, “for eleven million dollars.”
At this profanity the rattlesnake started another paroxysm of struggling, while his rattle sounded like an alarm-clock. When he stopped to rest, the Ornithologist raised his price to an even billion—in gold. It was evident that I was the white man’s hope. It would never do to let two members of aconquered race see a pale-face falter. Remembering Deerslayer at the stake, Daniel Boone, and sundry other brave white men without a cross, I set my teeth, gripped the rough, cold, scaly body just back of the crotched stick, and lifted. The great snake’s black, fixed, devilish eyes looked into mine. If, in this world, there are peep-holes into hell, they are found in the eyes of an enraged rattlesnake. As he came clear of the ground, he coiled round my arm to the elbow, so that the rattles sounded not a foot from my ear. Although the rattlesnake is not a constrictor, and there was no real danger, yet under the touch of his body my arm quivered like a tuning-fork.
“What makes your arm shake so?” queried Jim, watching me critically.
“It’s probably rheumatism,” I assured him.
Suddenly, under my grip, the snake’s mouth opened, showing on either side of the upper jaw ridges of white gum. From these suddenly flashed the movable fangs which are always folded back until ready for use. They were hollow and of a glistening white. Halfway down on the side of each was a tiny hole, from which the yellow venom slowly oozed. I began tremulously to unwind my unwelcome armlet, while Tin waited with the open bag.
“Be sure you take your hand away quick after you drop him in,” advised Jim.
“Don’t you worry about that,” I replied; “no man will ever get his hand away quicker than I’m going to.”
THE KING OF THE FOREST—THE BANDED RATTLESNAKE
THE KING OF THE FOREST—THE BANDED RATTLESNAKE
Whereupon I unwound the rattling coils from my arm, and then broke all speed records in removing my hand from the neighborhood of that snake. This was my first introduction to the King of the Dark Places, the grim timber rattlesnake, the handsomest of all the thirteen varieties found within the United States.
On my way back from the den it was Jim Pan who pointed out to me on the lower slope of the mountain the beautiful showy orchid (Orchis spectabilis). Between two oblong shining green leaves grew a loose spike of purple-pink and white butterfly blossoms. This is the first of the orchids to appear, and no more exquisite or beautiful flower could head the procession which stretches from May until September. I find this flower but seldom, usually because I am not in the hill-country early enough, although once I found a perfect flower in bloom as late as Decoration Day, a left-over from the first spring flowers.
It was Jim, too, that day, who quite appropriately showed me the rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera pubescens), with its rosette of green leaves heavily veined with white, from the centre of which in late summer grows a spike of crowded, greenish-white flowers. Under the doctrine of signatures, these leaves are still thought by many to be a sure cure for the bite of a rattlesnake. Personally, I would rather rely on a sharp knife and permanganate of potash. In the same group as the rattlesnake plantain are several varieties of lady’s tresses, which grow in every damp meadow in midsummer and early fall.Little spikes of greenish-white flowers they are, growing out of what looks like a twisted or braided stem. Of them all the most interesting to me is the grass-leaved lady’s tresses (Gyrostachys præcox), where the flowers grow round and round the stem in a perfect spiral.
As I went on with my hunting, I learned that not all the members of the orchis family are beautiful. There is the coral root, with tiny dull brownish-purple flowers, which one finds growing in dry woods, often near colonies of the Indian pipe. The green and the ragged-fringed orchids are other disappointing members. Yet, to a confirmed collector, even these poor relations of the family are full of interest. In fact, the second rarest orchid of our American list—the celebrated crane-fly orchid (Tipularia unifolia)—has a series of insignificant greenish-purple blossoms which look as much like mosquitoes or flies as anything else, and can be detected only with the greatest difficulty. Yet I am planning to take a journey of several hundred miles this very summer on the off-chance of seeing one of these flowers. Nearly as rare is the strange ram’s-head lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium arietinum), the rarest of all the cypripedia and belonging to the same family as the glorious moccasin flower and queen flower. The lip of the ram’s-head consists of a strange greenish pouch with purple streaks, shaped like the head of a ram.
There are scores of other odd, often lovely, and usually rare, members of the great orchis family, whichcan be met with from May to September. There is the beautiful golden whip-poor-will’s shoe, in two sizes (Cypripedium hirsutum, andCypripedium parviflorum), and those lovely nymphs, rose-purple Arethusa (Arethusa bulbosa), and Calypso (Calypso borealis), with her purple blossom varied with pink and shading to yellow.
One of the fascinations of orchid-hunting is the fact that you may suddenly light upon a strange orchid growing in a place which you have passed for years. Such a happening came to me the day when I first found the rose pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides). I was following a cow-path through the hard hack pastures which I had traveled perhaps a hundred times before. Suddenly, as I came to the slope of the upper pasture, growing in the wet bank of the deep-cut trail, my eye caught sight of a little flower of the purest rose-pink, the color of the peach-blossom, with a deeply fringed drooping lip, the whole flower springing from a slender stem with oval, grass-like leaves. To me it had a fragrance like almonds, although others have found in it the scent of sweet violets or of fresh raspberries. It is the pogonia family which includes the rarest of all of our orchids, the almost unknown smaller whorled pogonia (Pogonia affinis). Few indeed have been the botanists who have seen even a pressed specimen of this strange flower.
Two weeks after I found the rose pogonia, I came again to visit her. To my astonishment and delight, by her side was growing another orchid, like somepurple-pink butterfly which had alighted on a long swaying stem. It was no other than the beautiful grass-pink (Limodorum tuberosum), which blooms in July, while the pogonia comes out in late June. The grass-pink has from two to six blossoms on each stem, and the yellow lip is above instead of below the flower, as in the case of most orchids. Years later I was to find this orchid growing by scores in the pine-barrens.
Last, but by no means least, is the great genusHabenaria—the exquisite fringed orchids. Purple, white, gold, green—they wear all these colors. He who has never seen either the large or the small purple fringed orchid growing in the June or July meadows, or the flaming yellow fringed orchid all orange and gold in the August meadows, has still much for which to live.
It was with an orchid of this genus that I had my most recent adventure. I had traveled with the Botanist into the heart of the pine-barrens. There may be places where more flowers and rarer flowers and sweeter flowers grow than in these barrens, but if so, the Botanist and I have never found the spot. From the early spring, when the water freezes in the hollow leaves of the pitcher-plant, to the last gleam of the orange polygala in the late fall, we are always finding something rare and new. On that August day we followed a dim path that led through thickets of scrub-oak and sweet pepper-bush. By its side grew clumps of deer-grass, with its purple-pink petals and masses of orange-colored stamens. Sometimes thepath would disappear from sight in masses of hudsonia and sand-myrtle. Everywhere above the blueberry bushes flamed the regal Turk’s-cap lily, with its curved fire-red petals. On high the stalks towered above a tangle of lesser plants bearing great candelabra of glorious blossoms.
Finally, we came to a little ditch which some forgotten cranberry-grower had dug through the barrens to a long-deserted bog. On its side grew the rare thread-leafed sundew, with its long thread-like leaf covered with tiny red hairs and speckled thick with glittering drops of dew; while here and there little insects, which had alighted on the sweet, fatal drops, were enmeshed in the entangling hairs. Well above the line of strangled insects on which it fed, a pink blossom smiled unconcernedly. Like the attractive lady mentioned in Proverbs, her house goes down into the chambers of death.
As we followed the dike, the air was sweet with the perfume of white alder. The long stream of brown cedar-water was starred white with gleaming, fragrant water-lilies. In a marsh by the ditch grew clumps of cotton-grass or pussytoes, each stem of which bore a tuft of soft brown wool, like the down which a mother rabbit pulls from her breast when she lines her nest for her babies.
At last we came to the abandoned cranberry bog. Suddenly the Botanist jumped into the ditch, splashed his way across, and disappeared in the bog, waving his arms over his head. I found him on his knees in the wet sphagnum moss, chanting ecstaticallythe mystic word “Blephariglottis.” In front of him, on a green stem, was clustered a mass of little flowers of incomparable whiteness, with fringed lips and long spikes. One petal bent like a canopy over the brown stamens, while the other two flared out on either side, like the wings of tiny white butterflies. It was the white-fringed orchid (Habenaria blephariglottis). Beside her whiteness even the snowy petals of the water-lily and the white alder showed yellow tones. Like El Nath among the stars, the white fringed orchid is the standard of whiteness for the flowers.
Three great blue herons flew over our heads, folded their wings, and alighted not thirty yards away—an unheard-of proceeding for this wary bird. A Henslow sparrow sang his abrupt and, to us, almost unknown song. The Botanist neither saw nor heard. All the way home he was in a blissful daze, and when I said good-bye to him at the station, he only murmured happily “Blephariglottis.”