Forgotten Treasures #14: SPECKLED TROUT--PART 2

SPECKLED TROUT PART 2
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We tarried yet another day and night at the old stable, but taking our meals
outside squatted on the ground, which had now become quite dry. Part of the
day I spent strolling about the woods, looking up old acquaintances among
the birds, and, as always, half expectant of making new ones. Curiously
enough, the most abundant species were among those I had found rare in most
other localities, namely, the small water-wagtail, the mourning ground
warbler, and the yellow-bellied woodpecker. The latter seems to be the
prevailing woodpecker through the woods of this region.

That night the midges, those motes that sting, held high carnival. We
learned afterward, in the settlement below and from the barkpeelers, that it
was the worst night ever experienced in that valley. We had done no fishing
during the day, but had anticipated some fine sport about sundown.
Accordingly Aaron and I started off between six and seven o'clock, one going
upstream and the other down. The scene was charming. The sun shot up great
spokes of light from behind the woods, and beauty, like a presence, pervaded
the atmosphere. But torment, multiplied as the sands of the seashore,
lurked in every tangle and thicket. In a thoughtless moment I removed my
shoes and socks, and waded in the water to secure a fine trout that had
accidentally slipped from my string and was helplessly floating with the
current. This caused some delay and gave the gnats time to accumulate.
Before I had got one foot half dressed I was enveloped in a black mist that
settled upon my hands and neck and face, filling my ears with infinitesimal
pipings and covering my flesh with infinitesimal bitings. I thought I
should have to flee to the friendly fumes of the old stable, with "one
stocking off and one stocking on;" but I got my shoe on at last, though not
without many amusing interruptions and digressions.

In a few moments after this adventure I was in rapid retreat toward camp.
Just as I reached the path leading from the shanty to the creek, my
companion in the same ignoble flight reached it also, his hat broken and
rumpled, and his sanguine countenance looking more sanguinary than I had
ever before seen it, and his speech, also, in the highest degree
inflammatory. His face and forehead were as blotched and swollen as if he
had just run his head into a hornets' nest, and his manner as precipitate as
if the whole swarm was still at his back.

No smoke or smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in the
earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from the same
cause; but later a respite was granted us.

About ten o'clock, as we stood around our camp-fire, we were startled by
a brief but striking display of the aurora borealis. My imagination had
already been excited by talk of legends and of weird shapes and appearances,
and when, on looking up toward the sky, I saw those pale, phantasmal waves
of magnetic light chasing each other across the little opening above our
heads, and at first sight seeming barely to clear the treetops, I was as
vividly impressed as if I had caught a glimpse of a veritable spectre of the
Neversink. The sky shook and trembled like a great white curtain.

After we had climbed to our loft and had lain down to sleep, another
adventure befell us. This time a new and uninviting customer appeared upon
the scene, the _genius loci_ of the old stable, namely, the "fretful
porcupine." We had seen the marks and work of these animals about the
shanty, and had been careful each night to hang our traps, buns, etc.,
beyond their reach, but of the prickly night-walker himself we feared we
should not get a view.

We had lain down some half hour, and I was just on the threshold of sleep,
ready, as it were, to pass through the open door into the land of dreams,
when I heard outside somewhere that curious sound,--a sound which I had
heard every night I spent in these woods, not only on this but on former
expeditions, and which I had settled in my mind as proceeding from the
porcupine, since I knew the sounds our other common animals were likely to
make,--a sound that might be either a gnawing on some hard, dry substance,
or a grating of teeth, or a shrill grunting.

Orville heard it also, and, raising up on his elbow, asked, "What is that?"

"What the hunters call a 'porcupig,'"said I.

"Sure?"

"Entirely so."

"Why does he make that noise?"

"It is a way he has of cursing our fire," I replied. "I heard him last
night also."

"Where do you suppose he is?" inquired my companion, showing a disposition
to look him up.

"Not far off, perhaps fifteen or twenty yards from our fire, where the
shadows begin to deepen.

Orville slipped into his trousers, felt for my gun, and in a moment had
disappeared down through the scuttle hole. I had no disposition to follow
him, but was rather annoyed than otherwise at the disturbance. Getting the
direction of the sound, he went picking his way over the rough, uneven
ground, and, when he got where the light failed him, poling every doubtful
object with the end of his gun. Presently he poked a light grayish object,
like a large round stone, which surprised him by moving off. On this thing
he fired, making an incurable wound in the "porcupig," which, nevertheless,
tried harder than ever to escape. I lay listening, when, close on the heels
of the report of the gun, came excited shouts for a revolver. Snatching up
my Smith and Wesson, I hastened, shoeless and hatless, to the scene of
action, wondering what was up. I found my companion struggling to detain,
with the end of the gun, an uncertain object that was trying to crawl off
into the darkness. "Look out!" said Orville, as he saw my bare feet, "the
quills are lying thick around here."

And so they were; he had blown or beaten them nearly all off the poor
creature's back, and was in a fair way completely to disable my gun, the
ramrod of which was already broken and splintered clubbing his victim. But
a couple of shots from the revolver, sighted by a lighted match, at the head
of the animal, quickly settled him.

He proved to be an unusually large Canada porcupine,--an old patriarch, gray
and venerable, with spines three inches long, and weighing, I should say,
twenty pounds. The build of this animal is much like that of the woodchuck,
that is, heavy and pouchy. The nose is blunter than that of the woodchuck,
the limbs stronger, and the tail broader and heavier. Indeed, the latter
appendage is quite club-like, and the animal can, no doubt, deal a smart
blow with it. An old hunter with whom I talked thought it aided them in
climbing. They are inveterate gnawers, and spend much of their time in
trees gnawing the bark. In winter one will take up its abode in a hemlock,
and continue there till the tree is quite denuded. The carcass emitted a
peculiar, offensive odor, and, though very fat, was not in the least
inviting as game. It is part of the economy of nature for one animal to
prey upon some other beneath it, then the poor devil has indeed a mouthful
that makes a meal off the porcupine. Panthers and lynxes have essayed it,
but have invariably left off at the first course, and have afterwards been
found dead, or nearly so, with their heads puffed up like a pincushion, and
the quills protruding on all sides. A dog that understands the business
will manoeuvre round the porcupine till he gets an opportunity to throw it
over on its back when he fastens on its quilless underbody. Aaron was
puzzled to know how long-parted friends could embrace, when it was suggested
that the quills could be depressed or elevated at pleasure.

The next morning boded rain; but we had become thoroughly sated with the
delights of our present quarters, outside and in, and packed up our traps to
leave. Before we had reached the clearing, three miles below, the rain set
in, keeping up a lazy, monotonous drizzle till the afternoon.

The clearing was quite a recent one, made mostly by barkpeelers, who
followed their calling in the mountains round about in summer, and worked in
their shops making shingle in winter. The Biscuit Brook came in here from
the west,--a fine, rapid trout steam six or eight miles in length, with
plenty of deer in the mountains about its head. On its banks we found the
house of an old woodman, to whom we had been directed for information about
the section we proposed to traverse.

"Is the way very difficult," we inquired, "across from the Neversink into
the head of the Beaverkill?"

"Not to me; I could go it the darkest night ever was. And I can direct you
so you can find the way without any trouble. You go down the Neversink
about a mile, when you come to Highfall Brook, the first stream that comes
down on the right. Follow it up to Jim Reed's shanty, about three miles.
Then cross the stream, and on the left bank, pretty well up on the side of
the mountain, you will find a wood-road, which was made by a fellow below
here who stole some ash logs off the top of the ridge last winter and drew
them out on the snow. When the road first begins to tilt over the mountain,
strike down to your left, and you can reach the Beaverkill before sundown."

As it was then after two o'clock, and as the distance was six or eight of
these terrible hunters' miles, we concluded to take a whole day to it, and
wait till next morning. The Beaverkill flowed west, the Neversink south,
and I had a mortal dread of getting entangled amid the mountains and valleys
that lie in either angle.

Besides, I was glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects to
the finny tribes of the Neversink. At this point it was one of the finest
trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so sparkling, its bed so free from
sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had
just come from the hand of its Creator. I tramped along its margin upward
of a mile that afternoon, part of the time wading to my knees, and casting
my hook, baited only with a trout's fin, to the opposite bank. Trout are
real cannibals, and make no bones, and break none either, in lunching on
each other. A friend of mine had several in his spring, when one day a
large female trout gulped down one of her male friends, nearly one third her
own size, and went around for two days with the tail of her liege lord
protruding from her mouth! A fish's eye will do for bait, though the anal
fin is better. One of the natives here told me that when he wished to catch
large trout (and I judged he never fished for any other,--I never do), he
used for bait the bullhead, or dart, a little fish an inch and a half or two
inches long, that rests on the pebbles near shore and darts quickly, when
disturbed, from point to point. "Put that on your hook," said he, "and if
there is a big fish in the creek, he is bound to have it." But the darts
were not easily found; the big fish, I concluded, had cleaned them all out;
and, the, it was easy enough to supply our wants with a fin.

Declining the hospitable offers of the settlers, we spread our blankets that
night in a dilapidated shingle-shop on the banks of the Biscuit Brook, first
flooring the damp ground with the new shingle that lay piled in one corner.
The place had a great-throated chimney with a tremendous expanse of
fireplace within, that cried "More!" at every morsel of wood we gave it.

But I must hasten over this part of the ground, nor let the delicious
flavor of the milk we had that morning for breakfast, and that was so
delectable after four days of fish, linger on my tongue; nor yet tarry to
set down the talk of that honest, weatherworn passer-by who paused before
our door, and every moment on the point of resuming his way, yet stood for
an hour and recited his adventures hunting deer and bears on these
mountains. Having replenished our stock of bread and salt pork at the house
of one of the settlers, midday found us at Reed's shanty,--one of those
temporary structures erected by the bark jobber to lodge and board his
"hands" near their work. Jim not being at home, we could gain no
information from the "women folks" about the way, nor from the men who had
just come in to dinner; so we pushed on, as near as we could, according to
the instruction se had previously received. Crossing the creek, we forced
our way up the side of the mountain, through a perfect _cheval-de-frise_ of
fallen and peeled hemlocks, and, entering the dense woods above, began to
look anxiously about for the wood-road. My companions at first could see no
trace of it; but knowing that a casual wood-road cut in winter, when there
was likely to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present only
the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer,
and could make out a mark or two here and there. The larger trees had been
avoided, and the axe used only on the small saplings and underbrush, which
had been lopped off a couple of feet from the ground. By being constantly
on the alert, we followed it till near the top of the mountain; but, when
looking to see it "tilt" over the other side, it disappeared altogether.
Some stumps of the black cherry were found, and a solitary pair of snowshoes
was hanging high and dry on a branch, but no further trace of human hands
could we see. While we were resting here a couple of hermit thrushes, one
of them with some sad defect in his vocal powers which barred him from
uttering more than a few notes of his song, gave voice to the solitude of
the place. This was the second instance in which I have observed a
song-bird with apparently some organic defect in its instrument. The other
case was that of a bobolink, which, hover in mid-air and inflate its throat
as it might, could only force out a few incoherent notes. But the bird in
each case presented this striking contrast to human examples of the kind,
that it was apparently just as proud of itself, and just as well satisfied
with its performance, as were its more successful rivals.
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END PART 2