The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Dune Country

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Dune CountryThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Dune CountryAuthor: Earl H. ReedRelease date: November 23, 2018 [eBook #58330]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chuck Greif, ellinora and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUNE COUNTRY ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Dune CountryAuthor: Earl H. ReedRelease date: November 23, 2018 [eBook #58330]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chuck Greif, ellinora and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: The Dune Country

Author: Earl H. Reed

Release date: November 23, 2018 [eBook #58330]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, ellinora and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUNE COUNTRY ***

Contents.

(In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.)

(etext transcriber's note)

THE DUNE COUNTRY

The Dune Country.

ByEARL H. REEDAUTHOR OF“THE VOICES OF THE DUNES”“ETCHING: A PRACTICAL TREATISE”WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONSBY THE AUTHORNEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANYLONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEADTORONTO: S. B. GUNDY, MCMXVICopyright, 1916ByJOHN LANE COMPANYPRESS OFEaton & GettingerNEW YORK, U.S.A.

ToC. C. R.

THE text and illustrations in this book are intended to depict a strange and picturesque country, with some of its interesting wild life, and a few of the unique human characters that inhabit it.

The big ranges of sand dunes that skirt the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan, and the strip of sparsely settled broken country back of them, contain a rich fund of material for the artist, poet, and nature lover, as well as for those who would seek out the oddities of human kind in by-paths remote from much travelled highways.

In the following pages are some of the results of numerous sketching trips into this region, covering a series of years. Much material was found that was beyond the reach of the etching needle or the lead pencil, but many things seemed to come particularly within the province of those mediums, and they have both been freely used.

While many interesting volumes could be filled by pencil and pen, this story of the dunes and the “back country” has been condensed as much as seems consistent with the portrayal of their essential characteristics.

We are lured into the wilds by a natural instinct. Contact with nature’s forms and moods is a necessary stimulant to our spiritual and intellectual life. The untrammelled mind may find inspiration and growth in congenial isolation, for in it there are no competitive or antagonistic influences to divert or destroy its fruitage.

Comparatively isolated human types are usually more interesting, for the reason that individual development and natural ruggedness have not been rounded and polished by social attrition.

Social attrition would have ruined “old Sipes,” a part of whose story is in this book, and if it had ever been mentioned to him he probably would have thought that it was something that lived up in the woods that he had never seen.

Fictitious names have, for various reasons, been substituted for some of the characters in the following chapters. One of the old derelicts objected strenuously to the use of his name. “I don’t want to be in no book,” said he. “You can draw all the pitchers o’ me you want to, an’ use ’em, but as fer names, there’s nothin’ doin’.”

“Old Sipes” suggested that if “Doc Looney’s pitcher was put in a book, some o’ them females might see it an’ locate ’im,” but as the “Doc” has now disappeared this danger is probably remote.

E. H. R.

WHILE there are immense stretches of sand dunes in other parts of the world, it is of a particular dune country, to which many journeys have been made, and in which many days have been spent, that this story will be told.

The dunes sweep for many miles along the Lake Michigan coasts. They are post-glacial, and are undergoing slow continual changes, both in form and place,—the loose sand responding lightly to the action of varying winds.

The “fixed dunes” retain general forms, more or less stable, owing to the scraggly and irregular vegetation that has obtained a foothold upon them, but the “wandering dunes” move constantly. The fine sand is wafted in shimmering veils across the smooth expanses, over the ridges to the lee slopes. It swirls in soft clouds from the wind-swept summits, and, in the course of time, whole forests are engulfed. After years of entombment, the dead trunks and branches occasionally reappear in the path of the destroyer, and bend back with gnarled arms in self-defence, seeming to challenge their flinty foe to further conflict.

The general movement is east and southeast, owing to the prevalence of west and northwest winds in this region, which gather force in coming over the waters of the lake. The finer grains, which are washed up on the beach, are carried inland, the coarser particles remaining near the shore. The off-shore winds, being broken by the topography of the country, exercise a less but still noticeable influence. The loose masses retreat perceptibly toward the beach when these winds prevail for any great length of time.

To many this region simply means a distant line of sandy crests, tree-flecked and ragged, against the sky on the horizon—a mysterious and unknown waste, without commercial value, and therefore useless from a utilitarian standpoint.

It is not the land, but the landscape, not the utility, but the romantic and interesting wild life among these yellow ranges that is of value. It is the picturesque and poetic quality that we find in this land of enchantment that appeals to us, and it is because of this love in our lives that we now enter this strange country.

The landscapes among the dunes are not for the realist, not for the cold and discriminating recorder of facts, nor the materialist who would weigh with exact scales or look with scientific eyes. It is a country for the dreamer and the poet, who would cherish its secrets, open enchanted locks, and explore hidden vistas, which the Spirit of the Dunes has kept for those who understand.

The winds have here fashioned wondrous forms with the shuttles of the air and the mutable sands. Shadowy fortresses have been reared and bannered with the pines. Illusive distant towers are tingedby the subtle hues of the afterglows, as the twilights softly blend them into the glooms. In the fading light we may fancy the outlines of frowning castles and weird battlements, with ghostly figures along their heights.

If the desert was of concrete, its mystery and spiritual power would not exist. The deadly silences which nature leaves among her ruins are appalling, unless brightened by her voices of enduring hope. It is then that our spirits revive with her.

There is an unutterable gloom in the hush of the rocky immensities, where, in dim ages past, the waters have slowly worn away the stony barriers of the great canyons among the mountains. The countless centuries seem to hang over them like a pall, when no living green comes forth among the stones to nourish the soul with faith in life to come. We walk in these profound solitudes with an irresistible sense of spiritual depression.

On Nature’s great palette green is the color of hope. We see it in the leaves when the miracle of the spring unfolds them, and on the ocean’s troubled waters when the sun comes from behind the curtains of the sky. Even the tiny mosses cover with their mantles the emblems of despair when decay begins its subtle work on the fallen tree and broken stump.

We find in the dune country whatever we take to it. The repose of the yellow hills, which have been sculptured by the winds and the years, reflects the solemnity of our minds, and eternal hope is sustained by the expectant life that creeps from every fertile crevice.

While the wandering masses are fascinating, it is among the more permanent forms, where nature has laid her restraining hand, that we find the most picturesque material. It is here that the reconstructive processes have begun which impart life to the waste places. At first, among these wastes, one is likely to have a sense of loneliness. The long, undulating lines of ridged sand inspire thoughts of hopeless melancholy. The sparse vegetation, which in its struggle for life pathetically seizes and holds the partially fertile spots among these ever-shifting masses, has the appearance of broken submission. The wildly tangledroots—derelicts of the sands—which have been deserted and left to bleach in the sun by the slow movement of the great hills, emphasize the feeling of isolation. The changing winds may again give them a winding sheet, but as a part of nature’s refuse, they are slowly and steadily being resolved back into her crucible.

“DERELICTS OF THE SANDS”

To the colorist the dunes present ever-changing panoramas of hue and tone. Every cloud that trails its purple, phantom-like shadow across themcan call forth the resources of his palette, and he can find inspiration in the high nooks where the pines cling to their perilous anchorage.

The etcher may revel in their wealth of line. The harmonic undulations of the long, serrated crests, with sharp accents of gnarled roots and stunted trees, offer infinite possibilities in composition. To the imaginative enthusiast, seeking poetic forms of line expression, these dwarfed, neglected, crippled, and wasted things become subtle units in artistic arrangement.

As in all landscape, we find much material in these subjects that is entirely useless from an artistic standpoint. The thoughtful translator must be rigidly selective, and his work must go to other minds, to which he appeals, stripped of dross and unencumbered with superfluities. An ugly and ill-arranged mass of light and shade, that may disfigure the foreground, may be eliminated from the composition, but the graceful and slender weed growing near it may be used. A low, dark cloud in the distance may be carried a little farther away, if necessary, or it may be blown entirely away, if another cloud—floating only in the realm of imagination—will furnish the desired note of harmony. Truth need not necessarily be fact, but we must not include in our composition that which is not possible or natural to our subject. Representation of fact is not art, in its pure sense, but effective expression of thought, which fact may inspire, is art—and there is but one art, although there are many mediums.

IN THE WILD PLACES

One must feel the spirit and poetry of the dunes, if he deals with them as an artist who would sendtheir story into the world. The magic of successful artistic translation changes the sense of desolation into an impression of wild, weird beauty and romantic charm. It is the wildness, the mystery, the deep solemnity, and the infinite grandeur of this region which furnish themes of appealing picturesqueness.

Man has changed or destroyed natural scenery wherever he has come into practical contact with it. The fact that these wonderful hills are left to us is simply because he has not yet been able to carry away and use the sand of which they are composed. He has dragged the pines from their storm-scarred tops, and is utilizing their sands for the elevation of city railway tracks. Shrieking, rasping wheels now pass over them, instead of the crow’s shadow, the cry of the tern, or the echo of waves from glistening and untrampled shores.

The turmoil and bustle of the outside world is not heard on the placid stretches of these quiet undulations. Here the weary spirit finds repose among elemental forms which the ravages of civilization have left unspoiled. If we take beautiful minds and beautiful hearts into the dune country,we will find only beauty in it; and if we have not the love of beauty, we walk in darkness.

Filmy veils of white mist gather in the hollows during the still, cool hours of the night, and begin to move like curling smoke wreaths with the first faint breaths of dawn. The early hours of the morning are full of strange enchantment, and dawn on the dunes brings many wonders. When the first gray tones of light appear, the night-prowlers seek seclusion, and the stillness is broken by the crows. A single note is heard from among the boughs of a far-off pine, and in a few moments the air is filled with the noisy conversation of these interesting birds—mingled with the cries of the gulls and terns, which have come in from the lake and are searching for the refuse of the night waves. The beams of a great light burst through the trees—the leaves and the sands are touched with gold—and the awakening of the hills has come.

The twilights bring forth manifold beauties which the bright glare of the day has kept within their hiding-places. The rich purples that have been concealed among secret recesses creep out on

(From the Author’s Etching)DAWN IN THE HILLS

(From the Author’s Etching)

DAWN IN THE HILLS

the open spaces to meet the silvery light of the rising moon, and the colors of the dusk come to weave a web of phantasy over the landscape.

(From the Author’s Etching)TWILIGHT ON THE DUNES

(From the Author’s Etching)

TWILIGHT ON THE DUNES

It is then that the movement of nocturnal life commences and the tragedies of the night begin. A fleeting silhouette of a wing intersects the moon’s disc, and a dark shadowy thing moves swiftly across the sky-line of the trees. An attentivelistener will hear many strange and mysterious sounds. The Dune People are coming forth to seek their food from God.

“A FLEETING SILHOUETTE OF A WINGINTERSECTS THE MOON’S DISC”

When the morning comes, if the air is still, we can find the stories on the sand. Its surface is interlaced with thousands of little tracks and trails, leading in all directions. The tracks of the toads, and the hundreds of creeping insects on whichthey subsist, are all over the open places, crossed and recrossed many times by the footmarks of crows, herons, gulls, sandpipers, and other birds.

The movement of the four-footed life is mostly nocturnal. We find the imprints of the fox, raccoon, mink, muskrat, skunk, white-footed mouse, and other quadrupeds, that have been active during the night. To the practiced eye these trails are readily distinguishable, and often traces are found of a tragedy that has been enacted in the darkness. Some confused marks, and a mussy-looking spot on the sand, record a brief struggle for existence, and perhaps a few mangled remains, with some scattered feathers or bits of fur, are left to tell the tale. A weak life has gone out to support a stronger.

With the exception of the insects, the mice are the most frequent victims. Their hiding-places under tufts of grass, old stumps and decayed wood are ruthlessly sought out and the little families eagerly devoured. The owls glide silently over the wastes, searching the deep shadows for the small, velvet-footed creatures whose helplessnessrenders them easy prey. They are subject to immutable law and must perish.

Much of the mysterious lure of the dunes is in the magnificent sweep of the great lake along the wild shores. Its restless waters are the complement of the indolent sands. The distant bands of deep blue and green, dappled with dancing white-caps, in the vistas through the openings, impart vivid color accents to the grays and neutral tones of the foregrounds.

No great mind has ever flowered to its fullness that was insensible to the allurements of a large body of water. It may be likened to a human soul. It is now tempestuous, and now placid. Beneath its surface are unknown caverns and unsounded depths into which light never goes. If by chance some piercing ray should ever reach them, wondrous beauty might be revealed.

The waters of the lake are never perfectly still. In calms that seem absolute, a careful eye will find at least a slight undulation.

On quiet days the little waves ripple and lisp along the miles of wet sand, and the delicate streaks of oscillating foam creep away in a feathery anduncertain line, that fades and steals around a distant curve in the shore.

(From the Author’s Etching)THE SONG OF THE EAST SHORE

(From the Author’s Etching)

THE SONG OF THE EAST SHORE

After the storms the long ground-swells roll in for days, beating their rhythmic measures, and unfolding their snowy veils before them as they come.

The echoes of the roar of the surf among the distant dunes pervade them with solemn sound. An indefinable spirit of mute resistance and powerbroods in the inert masses. They seem to be holding back mighty and remote forces that beat upon their barriers.

The color fairies play out on the bosom of the lake in the silver radiance of the moon and stars, and marvelous tones are spread upon it by the sun and clouds. Invisible brushes, charged with celestial pigments, seem to sweep over its great expanse, mingling prismatic hues and changing them fitfully, in wayward fancy, as a master might delight to play with a medium that he had conquered. Fugitive cloud shadows move swiftly over areas of turquoise and amethyst. Fleeting iridescent hues revel with the capricious breezes in loving companionship.

When the storm gods lash the lake with whistling winds, and send their sullen dark array through the skies, and the music of the tempest blends with song of the surges on the shore, the color tones seem to become vocal and to mingle their cadences with the voices of the gale.

We may look from the higher dune tops upon panoramas of surpassing splendor. There are piles on piles of sandy hills, accented with greenmasses and solitary pines. These highways of the winds and storms, with their glittering crowns and shadowy defiles, sweep into dim perspective. Their noble curves become smaller and smaller, until they are folded away and lost on the horizon’s hazy rim.

(From the Author’s Etching)HIGHWAYS OF THE WINDS

(From the Author’s Etching)

HIGHWAYS OF THE WINDS

A sinuous ribbon of sunlit beach winds along the line of the breakers, and meets the point of a misty headland far away.

The blue immensity of the lake glistens, and is flecked with foam. White plumes are tossing and waving along the sky-line. In the foreground little groups of sandpipers are running nimbly along the edges of the incoming waves, racing after them as they retreat, and lightly taking wing when they come too near. There are flocks of stately gulls, balancing themselves with set wings, high in the wind, and a few terns are skimming along the crests. The gray figures of two or three herons are stalking about, with much dignity, near some driftwood that dots the dry sand farther up the shore.

Colors rare and glorious are in the sky. The sun is riding down in a chariot of gold and purple, attended by a retinue of clouds in resplendent robes. The twilight comes, the picture fades, but the spell remains.

Intrepid voyagers from the Old World journeyed along these primitive coasts centuries ago. Their footprints were soon washed away in the surf lines, but the romance of their trails still rests upon the sands that they traversed.

In years of obscure legend, birch-bark canoeswere drawn out on the gleaming beach by red men who carried weapons of stone. They hunted and fought among the yellow hills. They saw them basking under summer suns, and swept by the furies of winter storms. From their tops they watched the dying glories of the afterglows in the western skies. They saw the great lake shimmer in still airs, and heard the pounding of remorseless waters in its sterner moods. They who carried the weapons of stone are gone, and time has hidden them in the silence of the past.

Out in the mysterious depths of the lake are pale sandy floors that no eye has ever seen. The mobile particles are shifted and eddied into strange shadowy forms by the inconstant and unknown currents that flow in the gloom. There are white bones and ghostly timbers there which are buried and again uncovered. There are dunes under the waters, as well as on the shores. Slimy mosses creep along their shelving sides and over their pallid tops into profound chasms beyond. Finny life moves among the subaqueous vegetation that thrives in the fertile areas, and out over the smooth wastes,but this is a world concealed. Our pictures are in the air.

When winter lays its mantle of snow upon the country of the dunes the whitened crests loom in softened lines. The contours become spectral in their chaste robes. Along the frosty summits the intricacies of the naked trees and branches, in their winter sleep, are woven delicately against the moody skies, and the hills, far away, draped in their chill raiment, stand in faint relief on the gray horizon. The black companies of the crows wing across the snow-clad heights in desultory flight.

When the bitter blasts come out of the clouds in the north, the light snow scurries over the hoary tops into the shelters of the hollows. Out in the ice fields on the lake grinding masses heave with the angry surges that seek the shore. Crystal fragments, shattered and splintered, shine in the dim light, far out along the margins of the open, turbulent water. Great piles of broken ice have been flung along the beach, heaped into bewildering forms by the billows, and a few gullsskirt the ragged frozen mounds for possible stray bits of food.

The wind and the cold have builded grim ramparts for the sunshine and the April rains to conquer.

(From the Author’s Etching)“HERALDS OF THE STORM”

(From the Author’s Etching)

“HERALDS OF THE STORM”

THE gulls are a picturesque and interesting feature of dune life. These gray and white birds, while they do not entirely avoid human association, have few of the home-like charms of most of our feathered neighbors.

“Catfish John,” the old fisherman with whom I often talked about the birds and animals in the dune country, had very little use for them. He said that “they flopped ’round a whole lot, an’ seemed to keep a goin’.” He “didn’t never find no eggs, an’ they didn’t seem to set anywheres. They git away with the bait when its left out, an’ they seem mostly to live off’n fish an’ dead things they find on the beach an’ floatin’ round in the lake. They’ll tackle a mouthful big enough to choke a horse if they like the looks of it.”

He thought that “them that roosted out on the net stakes didn’t go to sleep entirely, or they’d slip off in the night.”

The gull has many charms for the ornithologist and the poet. He is valuable to the artist, as anaccent in the sky, when he is on the wing, giving a thrill of life to the most desolate landscape.

“THEM THAT ROOSTED OUT ON THE NET STAKES”

He is interesting to the eye when proudly walking along the beach, or sitting silently, with hundreds of others, in solemn conclave on the shore. Old piles and floating objects in the lake have an added interest with his trim figure perched upon them. The perched birds seem magnified and ghostly when one comes suddenly upon them inthe fog and they disappear with shrill cries into the mists.

There is no gleam of human interest in the eye of a gull. It is fierce, cold, and utterly wild. The birds we love most are those that nest in the land in which we live. The home is the real bond among living things, and our feathered friends creep easily into our affections when we can hear their love songs and watch their home life.

The transient winged tribes, that come and go—like ships on the sea—and rear their young in other lands, arouse our poetic reflections, challenge our admiration, and excite our love of the beautiful. They delight our eyes but not our hearts.

The graceful forms of the gulls give an ethereal note of exaltation to the spirit of the landscape—a suggestion of the Infinite—as they soar in long curves in the azure blue, or against the dark clouds that roll up in portentous masses from the distant horizon and sweep across the heavens over the great lake. They are the heralds of the storms, and a typical expression of life in the sky.

Their matchless grace on the wing, as they wheel in the teeth of the tempest or glide with set pinions in the currents of the angry winds, makes them a part of nature’s dramas in the heavens—aloof and remote from earthly things—mingling with the unseen forces and mysteries of the Great Unknown.

These rovers of the clouds seem to love no abodes but the stormy skies and foaming waves. Their flights are desultory when the winds are still. When the calms brood over the face of the waters, they congregate on the glassy surface, like little white fleets at anchor, and rest for hours, until hunger again takes them into the air.

They often leave the lake and soar over the dune country on windy days, searching far inland for food, but when night comes they return to the water.

In early August they come down from the Lake Superior country and from the more distant north, where perhaps many of them have spent the summer near the arctic circle. They bring with them their big brown young, from the rocky islands in those remote regions, and to these islands they will return in the spring. The young birds do not don their silver-gray plumage until the second year.

In the autumn the unseen paths in the sky are filled with countless wings on their way to the tropics, but the gulls remain to haunt the bare landscapes and the chill waters of the lake, until the return of the great multitudes of migrant birds in April or May, when they leave for their northern homes.

In the wake of the gulls come the terns—those graceful, gliding little creatures in pearl-gray robes—which skim and hover over the waves, and search them for their daily food.

There is something peculiarly elf-like and wispy in their flight. Agile and keen eyed, with their mosquito-like bills pointed downward, they dart furtively, like water-sprites, along the crests of the billows, seeming to winnow the foam and spray.

With low plaintive cries the scattered flocks follow the surf lines against the wind and the dipping wings can be seen far out over the lake.

They often pause in the air, and drop like plummets, entirely out of sight under water, in pursuit of unsuspecting small fish, to reappear with the wiggling tails of the little victims protruding from their bills. Many thousands of them patrol theshores and waters, but they also are transients, and soon wing their ways to colder or warmer climes.

The nature lover finds manifold charms in the bird life of the dune country. There are many varieties to interest him. While we may endeavor to restrict our consideration to the purely artistic side of the subject, it would be impossible to define a point that would separate the artistic instinct from the love of the live things, and of nature in general, for there is no such point. One merges naturally into the other.

It is not necessary for a lover of nature to have an exact scientific knowledge of all the things he sees in order to derive enjoyment from them, but a trained observer is more sensitive to the poetic influences of nature, has a wider range of vision, a greater capacity for appreciation, and is more deeply responsive to the subtle harmonies than one who is only susceptible to the more obvious aspects.

The love of the Little Things which are concealed from the ordinary eye comes only to one who has sought out their hiding-places, and learned their ways by tender and long association. Theirworld and ours is fundamentally the same, and to know them is to know ourselves.

We sometimes cannot tell whether the clear, flutelike note from the depths of the ravine comes from the thrush or the oriole, but we know that the little song has carried us just a little nearer to nature’s heart than we were before. If we could see the singer and learn his name, his silvery tones would be still more pure and sweet when he comes again.

The spring songs in the dune country seem to exalt and sanctify the forest aisles, and to weave a spell out over the open spaces. The still sands seem to awaken under the vibrant melodies of the choirs among the trees. These sanctuaries are not for those who would “shower shot into a singing tree,” but for him who comes to listen and to worship.

The voices of the dunes are in many keys. The cries of the gulls and crows—the melodies of the songsters—the wind tones among the trees—the roar of the surf on the shore—the soft rustling of the loose sands, eddying among the beach grasses—the whirr of startled wings in the ravines—thepiping of the frogs and little toads in the marshy spots—the chorus of the katydids and locusts—the prolonged notes of the owls at night—and many other sounds, all blend into the greater song of the hills, and become a part of the appeal to our higher emotions, in this land of enchantment and mystery.

SOMETIMES we find interesting little comedies mapped on the sands.

One morning the July sun had come from behind the clouds, after a heavy rain, and quickly dried the surface, leaving the firm, wet sand underneath. On the dunes, walks are particularly delightful when the moist, packed sand becomes a yellow floor, but it requires much endurance andenthusiasm to trudge through miles of soft sand on a hot day and retain a contemplative mood.

We suddenly came upon some turtle tracks, beginning abruptly out on an open space, indicating that the traveler had probably withdrawn into the privacy and shelter of his mobile castle, and resumed his journey when the sun appeared. All traces of his arrival at the point where the tracks began had been obliterated by the rain.

We were curious to ascertain his objective, and as the trail was in perfect condition, we followed it carefully for several hundred yards, when we found another trail interrupting it obliquely from another direction. Within an area of perhaps twenty feet in diameter the tracks had left a confused network on the smooth sand. Evidently there had been much discussion and consideration before a final decision had been reached. Then the trails started off in the same direction, side by side, varying from a foot to two feet or so apart.

There was much mystery in all this. Our curiosity continued, and about half a mile farther on the smaller trail of the last comer suddenly veered off toward the lake and disappeared in the wetsand of the beach. The original trail finally ended several hundred yards farther on in a clear stream, and there we saw Mr. Hardfinish resting quietly on the shallow bottom, with the cool current flowing over him.

We may have stumbled on a turtle romance. Perhaps a tryst had been kept, and after much argument and persuasion the two had decided to combine their destinies. It may have been incompatibility of temperament, or affection grown cold, which caused the later estrangement. A fickle heart may have throbbed under the shell of the faithless amphibian who had joined the expedition, but whatever the cause of the separation was, the initiator of the journey had been left to finish it alone. His trail showed no wavering at the point of desertion, and evidently the rhythm of his march was not disturbed by it.

There is much food for reflection in this story on the sand. What we call human nature is very largely the nature of all animal life, and community of interest governs all association. When it ceases to exist, the quadruped or biped invariably seeks isolation. Selfishness is soul solitude.

In the case of the turtles the highly civilized divorce courts were not necessary. They simply quit.

The record of the little romance was written upon a frail page, which the next wind or shower obliterated as completely as time effaces most of the stories of human lives.

The turtles are persistent wanderers. Their trails are found all through the dune country, and usually a definite objective seems to be indicated. A trail will begin at the margin of a small pond back of the hills, and follow practically a direct route for a long distance to another pond, often over a mile away. Sometimes high eminences intervene, which are patiently climbed over without material alteration in the course which the mysterious compass under the brown shell has laid before it.

The deserted habitat may have been invaded by unwelcome new arrivals and rendered socially unattractive. Domestic complications may have inspired the pilgrimage, the voyager may have decided that he was unappreciated in the community in which he lived, or he may have beenexcommunicated for unbelief in established turtle dogmas.

The common variegated pond turtle, which is the variety most often found among the dunes, is a beautiful harmless creature, but his wicked cousin, the snapping turtle, is an ugly customer. He leads a life of debased villainy, and no justification for his existence has yet been discovered. He is a rank outlaw, and the enemy of everything within his radius of destruction. His crimes are legion, and like the sand-burr, he seems to be one of nature’s inadvertencies. The mother ducks, the frog folk, and all the small life in the sloughs dread his sinister bulk and relentless jaws.

He is a voracious brute, and feeds upon all kinds of animal fare. He often attains a weight of about forty pounds, and the rough moss covered shell of a full grown specimen is sometimes fourteen inches long. One of the peculiarities of this repulsive wretch is that he strikes at his victims much in the same manner as a rattlesnake, and with lightning-like rapidity.

Possibly he was sent into the world to assist in enabling us to accentuate our blessings by contrast—as some people we occasionally meet undoubtedly were—and it is best to let him absolutely alone. He is an evil and unclean thing and we will pass him by. Like the skunk, he does not invite companionship, and has no social charms whatever.

It was not he who helped to play the little comedy on the sand.

Back to Index Next