Wilderness Ways by William J Long
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8 [Illustration: frontispiece]
WILDERNESS WAYS
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG
_SECOND SERIES_
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenaeum Press
1900
TO KILLOOLEET, Little Sweet-Voice,
who shares my camp and
makes sunshine as I work and play.
PREFACE.
The following sketches, like the "Ways of Wood Folk," are the
result of many years of personal observation in the woods and
fields. They are studies of animals, pure and simple, not of
animals with human motives and imaginations.
Indeed, it is hardly necessary for genuine interest to give human
traits to the beasts. Any animal is interesting enough as an
animal, and has character enough of his own, without borrowing
anything from man--as one may easily find out by watching long
enough.
Most wild creatures have but small measure of gentleness in them,
and that only by instinct and at short stated seasons. Hence I
have given both sides and both kinds, the shadows and lights, the
savagery as well as the gentleness of the wilderness creatures.
It were pleasanter, to be sure, especially when you have been
deeply touched by some exquisite bit of animal devotion, to let
it go at that, and to carry with you henceforth an ideal
creature.
But the whole truth is better--better for you, better for
children--else personality becomes confused with mere animal
individuality, and love turns to instinct, and sentiment
vaporizes into sentimentality.
This mother fox or fish-hawk here, this strong mother loon or
lynx that to-day brings the quick moisture to your eyes by her
utter devotion to the little helpless things which great Mother
Nature gave her to care for, will to-morrow, when they are grown,
drive those same little ones with savage treatment into the world
to face its dangers alone, and will turn away from their
sufferings thereafter with astounding indifference.
It is well to remember this, and to give proper weight to the
word, when we speak of the _love_ of animals for their little
ones.
I met a bear once--but this foolish thing is not to be
imitated--with two small cubs following at her heels. The mother
fled into the brush; the cubs took to a tree. After some timorous
watching I climbed after the cubs, and shook them off, and put
them into a bag, and carried them to my canoe, squealing and
appealing to the one thing in the woods that could easily have
helped them. I was ready enough to quit all claims and to take to
the brush myself upon inducement. But the mother had found a
blueberry patch and was stuffing herself industriously.
And I have seen other mother bears since then, and foxes and deer
and ducks and sparrows, and almost all the wild creatures
between, driving their own offspring savagely away. Generally
the young go of their own accord as early as possible, knowing no
affection but only dependence, and preferring liberty to
authority; but more than once I have been touched by the sight of
a little one begging piteously to be fed or just to stay, while
the mother drove him away impatiently. Moreover, they all kill
their weaklings, as a rule, and the burdensome members of too
large a family. This is not poetry or idealization, but just
plain animal nature.
As for the male animals, little can be said truthfully for their
devotion. Father fox and wolf, instead of caring for their mates
and their offspring, as we fondly imagine, live apart by
themselves in utter selfishness. They do nothing whatever for the
support or instruction of the young, and are never suffered by
the mothers to come into the den, lest they destroy their own
little ones. One need not go to the woods to see this; his own
stable or kennel, his own dog or cat will be likely to reveal the
startling brutality at the first good opportunity.
An indiscriminate love for all animals, likewise, is not the best
sentiment to cultivate toward creation. Black snakes in a land of
birds, sharks in the bluefish rips, rabbits in Australia, and
weasels everywhere are out of place in the present economy of
nature. Big owls and hawks, representing a yearly destruction of
thousands of good game birds and of untold innocent songsters,
may also be profitably studied with a gun sometimes instead of
an opera-glass. A mink is good for nothing but his skin; a red
squirrel--I hesitate to tell his true character lest I spoil too
many tender but false ideals about him all at once.
The point is this, that sympathy is too true a thing to be
aroused falsely, and that a wise discrimination, which recognizes
good and evil in the woods, as everywhere else in the world, and
which loves the one and hates the other, is vastly better for
children, young and old, than the blind sentimentality aroused by
ideal animals with exquisite human propensities. Therefore I
wrote the story of Kagax, simply to show him as he is, and so to
make you hate him.
In this one chapter, the story of Kagax the Weasel, I have
gathered into a single animal the tricks and cruelties of a score
of vicious little brutes that I have caught red-handed at their
work. In the other chapters I have, for the most part, again
searched my old notebooks and the records of wilderness camps,
and put the individual animals down just as I found them.
Wm. J. Long.
Stamford, September, 1900.
CONTENTS.
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER
II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE
III. KAGAX THE BLOODTHIRSTY
IV. KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES THE WRONG RAT
V. CHIGWOOLTZ THE FROG
VI. CLOUD WINGS THE EAGLE
VII. UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW
VIII. HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER.
[Illustration: Megaleep]
Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His
Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the
Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and
fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary
and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two
days in succession. At once shy and bold, solitary and gregarious;
restless as a cloud, yet clinging to his feeding grounds, spite of
wolves and hunters, till he leaves them of his own free will; wild as
Kakagos the raven, but inquisitive as a blue jay,--he is the most
fascinating and the least known of all the deer.
One thing is quite sure, before you begin your study: he is never
where his tracks are, nor anywhere near it. And if after a season's
watching and following you catch one good glimpse of him, that is a
good beginning.
I had always heard and read of Megaleep as an awkward, ungainly
animal, but almost my first glimpse of him scattered all that to the
winds and set my nerves a-tingling in a way that they still remember.
It was on a great chain of barrens in the New Brunswick wilderness. I
was following the trail of a herd of caribou one day, when far ahead a
strange clacking sound came ringing across the snow in the crisp
winter air. I ran ahead to a point of woods that cut off my view from
a five-mile barren, only to catch breath in astonishment and drop to
cover behind a scrub spruce. Away up the barren my caribou, a big herd
of them, were coming like an express train straight towards me. At
first I could make out only a great cloud of steam, a whirl of flying
snow, and here and there the angry shake of wide antlers or the gleam
of a black muzzle. The loud clacking of their hoofs, sweeping nearer
and nearer, gave a snap, a tingle, a wild exhilaration to their rush
which made one want to shout and swing his hat. Presently I could make
out the individual animals through the cloud of vapor that drove down
the wind before them. They were going at a splendid trot, rocking
easily from side to side like pacing colts, power, grace, tirelessness
in every stride. Their heads were high, their muzzles up, the antlers
well back on heaving shoulders. Jets of steam burst from their
nostrils at every bound; for the thermometer was twenty below zero,
and the air snapping. A cloud of snow whirled out and up behind them;
through it the antlers waved like bare oak boughs in the wind; the
sound of their hoofs was like the clicking of mighty castanets--"Oh
for a sledge and bells!" I thought; for Santa Claus never had such a
team.
So they came on swiftly, magnificently, straight on to the cover
behind which I crouched with nerves thrilling as at a cavalry
charge,--till I sprang to my feet with a shout and swung my hat; for,
as there was meat enough in camp, I had small wish to use my rifle,
and no desire whatever to stand that rush at close quarters and be run
down. There was a moment of wild confusion out on the barren just in
front of me. The long swinging trot, that caribou never change if they
can help it, was broken into an awkward jumping gallop. The front rank
reared, plunged, snorted a warning, but were forced onward by the
pressure behind. Then the leading bulls gave a few mighty bounds which
brought them close up to me, but left a clear space for the
frightened, crowding animals behind. The swiftest shot ahead to the
lead; the great herd lengthened out from its compact mass; swerved
easily to the left, as at a word of command; crashed through the
fringe of evergreen in which I had been hiding,--out into the open
again with a wild plunge and a loud cracking of hoofs, where they all
settled into their wonderful trot again, and kept on steadily across
the barren below.
That was the sight of a lifetime. One who saw it could never again
think of caribou as ungainly animals.
Megaleep belongs to the tribe of Ishmael. Indeed, his Latin name, as
well as his Indian one, signifies The Wanderer; and if you watch him a
little while you will understand perfectly why he is called so. The
first time I ever met him in summer, in strong contrast to the winter
herd, made his name clear in a moment. It was twilight on a wilderness
lake. I was sitting in my canoe by the inlet, wondering what kind of
bait to use for a big trout which lived in an eddy behind a rock, and
which disdained everything I offered him. The swallows were busy,
skimming low, and taking the young mosquitoes as they rose from the
water. One dipped to the surface near the eddy. As he came down I saw
a swift gleam in the depths below. He touched the water; there was a
swirl, a splash--and the swallow was gone. The trout had him.
Then a cow caribou came out of the woods onto the grassy point above
me to drink. First she wandered all over the point, making it look
afterwards as if a herd had passed. Then she took a sip of water by a
rock, crossed to my side of the point, and took a sip there; then to
the end of the point, and another sip; then back to the first place. A
nibble of grass, and she waded far out from shore to sip there; then
back, with a nod to a lily pad, and a sip nearer the brook. Finally
she meandered a long way up the shore out of sight, and when I picked
up the paddle to go, she came back again. Truly a _Wandergeist_ of the
woods, like the plover of the coast, who never knows what he wants,
nor why he circles about so, nor where he is going next.
If you follow the herds over the barrens and through the forest in
winter, you find the same wandering, unsatisfied creature. And if you
are a sportsman and a keen hunter, with well established ways of
trailing and stalking, you will be driven to desperation a score of
times before you get acquainted with Megaleep. He travels enormous
distances without any known object. His trail is everywhere; he is
himself nowhere. You scour the country for a week, crossing
innumerable trails, thinking the surrounding woods must be full of
caribou; then a man in a lumber camp, where you are overtaken by
night, tells you that he saw the herd you are after 'way down on the
Renous barrens, thirty miles below. You go there, and have the same
experience,--signs everywhere, old signs, new signs, but never a
caribou. And, ten to one, while you are there, the caribou are
sniffing your snowshoe track suspiciously back on the barrens that you
have just left.
Even in feeding, when you are hot on their trail and steal forward
expecting to see them every moment, it is the same exasperating story.
They dig a hole through four feet of packed snow to nibble the
reindeer lichen that grows everywhere on the barrens. Before it is
half eaten they wander off to the next barren and dig a larger hole;
then away to the woods for the gray-green hanging moss that grows on
the spruces. Here is a fallen tree half covered with the rich food.
Megaleep nibbles a bite or two, then wanders away and away in search
of another tree like the one he has just left.
And when you find him at last, the chances are still against you. You
are stealing forward cautiously when a fresh sign attracts attention.
You stop to examine it a moment. Something gray, dim, misty, seems to
drift like a cloud through the trees ahead. You scarcely notice it
till, on your right, a stir, and another cloud, and another--The
caribou, quick, a score of them! But before your rifle is up and you
have found the sights, the gray things melt into the gray woods and
drift away; and the stalk begins all over again.
The reason for this restlessness is not far to seek. Megaleep's
ancestors followed regular migrations in spring and autumn, like the
birds, on the unwooded plains beyond the Arctic Circle. Megaleep never
migrates; but the old instinct is in him and will not let him rest. So
he wanders through the year, and is never satisfied.
Fortunately nature has been kind to Megaleep in providing him with
means to gratify his wandering disposition. In winter, moose and red
deer must gather into yards and stay there. With the first heavy storm
of December, they gather in small bands here and there on the hardwood
ridges, and begin to make paths in the snow,--long, twisted, crooked
paths, running for miles in every direction, crossing and recrossing
in a tangle utterly hopeless to any head save that of a deer or moose.
These paths they keep tramped down and more or less open all winter,
so as to feed on the twigs and bark growing on either side. Were it
not for this curious provision, a single severe winter would leave
hardly a moose or a deer alive in the woods; for their hoofs are sharp
and sink deep, and with six feet of snow on a level they can scarcely
run half a mile outside their paths without becoming hopelessly
stalled or exhausted.
It is this great tangle of paths, by the way, which makes a deer or a
moose yard; and not the stupid hole in the snow which is pictured in
the geographies and most natural history books.
But Megaleep the Wanderer makes no such provision he depends upon
Mother Nature to take care of him. In summer he is brown, like the
great tree trunks among which he moves unseen. Then the frog of his
foot expands and grows spongy, so that he can cling to the
mountain-side like a goat, or move silently over the dead leaves. In
winter he becomes a soft gray, the better to fade into a snowstorm, or
to stand concealed in plain sight on the edges of the gray, desolate
barrens that he loves. Then the frog of his foot arches up out of the
way; the edges of his hoof grow sharp and shell-like, so that he can
travel over glare ice without slipping, and cut the crust to dig down
for the moss upon which he feeds. The hoofs, moreover, are very large
and deeply cleft, so as to spread widely when his weight is on them.
When you first find his track in the snow, you rub your eyes, thinking
that a huge ox must have passed that way. The dew-claws are also
large, and the ankle joint so flexible that it lets them down upon the
snow. So Megaleep has a kind of natural snowshoe with which he moves
easily over the crust, and, except in very deep, soft snows, wanders
at will, while other deer are prisoners in their yards. It is the
snapping of these loose hoofs and ankle joints that makes the merry
clacking sound as caribou run.
Sometimes, however, they overestimate their abilities, and their
wandering disposition brings them into trouble. Once I found a herd of
seven up to their backs in soft snow, and tired out,--a strange
condition for a caribou to be in. They were taking the affair
philosophically, resting till they should gather strength to flounder
to some spruce tops where moss was plenty. When I approached gently on
snowshoes (I had been hunting them diligently the week before to kill
them; but this put a different face on the matter) they gave a bound
or two, then settled deep in the snow, and turned their heads and said
with their great soft eyes: "You have hunted us. Here we are, at your
mercy."
They were very much frightened at first; then I thought they grew a
bit curious, as I sat down peaceably in the snow to watch them. One--a
doe, more exhausted than the others, and famished--even nibbled a bit
of moss that I pushed near her with a stick. I had picked it with
gloves, so that the smell of my hand was not on it. After an hour or
so, if I moved softly, they let me approach quite up to them without
shaking their antlers or renewing their desperate attempts to flounder
away. But I did not touch them. That is a degradation which no wild
creature will permit when he is free; and I would not take advantage
of their helplessness.
Did they starve in the snow? you ask. Oh, no! I went to the place next
day and found that they had gained the spruce tops, ploughing through
the snow in great bounds, following the track of the strongest, which
went ahead to break the way. There they fed and rested, then went to
some dense thickets where they passed the night. In a day or two the
snow settled and hardened, and they took to their wandering again.
Later, in hunting, I crossed their tracks several times, and once I
saw them across a barren; but I left them undisturbed, to follow other
trails. We had eaten together; they had fed from my hand; and there
is no older truce on earth than that, not even in the unchanging East,
where it originated.
Megaleep in a storm is a most curious creature, the nearest thing to a
ghost to be found in the woods. More than other animals he feels the
falling barometer. His movements at such times drive you to
desperation, if you are following him; for he wanders unceasingly.
When the storm breaks he has a way of appearing suddenly, as if he
were seeking you, when by his trail you thought him miles ahead. And
the way he disappears--just melts into the thick driving flakes and
the shrouded trees--is most uncanny. Six or seven caribou once played
hide-and-seek with me that way, giving me vague glimpses here and
there, drawing near to get my scent, yet keeping me looking up wind
into the driving snow where I could see nothing distinctly. And all
the while they drifted about like so many huge flakes of the storm,
watching my every movement, seeing me perfectly.
At such times they fear little, and even lay aside their usual
caution. I remember trailing a large herd one day from early morning,
keeping near them all the time, and jumping them half a dozen times,
yet never getting a glimpse because of their extreme watchfulness. For
some reason they were unwilling to leave a small chain of barrens.
Perhaps they knew the storm was coming, when they would be safe; and
so, instead of swinging off into a ten-mile straightaway trot at the
first alarm, they kept dodging back and forth within a two-mile
circle. At last, late in the afternoon, I followed the trail to the
edge of dense evergreen thickets. Caribou generally rest in open woods
or on the windward edge of a barren. Eyes for the open, nose for the
cover, is their motto. And I thought, "They know perfectly well I am
following them, and so have lain down in that tangle. If I go in, they
will hear me; a wood mouse could hardly keep quiet in such a place. If
I go round, they will catch my scent; if I wait, so will they; if I
jump them, the scrub will cover their retreat perfectly."
As I sat down in the snow to think it over, a heavy rush deep within
the thicket told me that something, not I certainly, had again started
them. Suddenly the air darkened, and above the excitement of the hunt
I felt the storm coming. A storm in the woods is no joke when you are
six miles from camp without axe or blanket. I broke away from the
trail and started for the head of the second barren on the run. If I
could make that, I was safe; for there was a stream near, which led
near to camp; and one cannot very well lose a stream, even in a
snowstorm. But before I was halfway the flakes were driving thick and
soft in my face. Another half-mile, and one could not see fifty feet
in any direction. Still I kept on, holding my course by the wind and
my compass. Then, at the foot of the second barren, my snowshoes
stumbled into great depressions in the snow, and I found myself on the
fresh trail of my caribou again. "If I am lost, I will at least have a
caribou steak, and a skin to wrap me up in," I said, and plunged after
them. As I went, the old Mother Goose rhyme of nursery days came back
and set itself to hunting music:
Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a hunting,
For to catch a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.
Presently I began to sing it aloud. It cheered one up in the storm,
and the lilt of it kept time to the leaping kind of gallop which is
the easiest way to run on snowshoes: "Bye, baby bunting; bye, baby
bunting--Hello!"
A dark mass loomed suddenly up before me on the open barren. The storm
lightened a bit, before setting in heavier; and there were the caribou
just in front of me, standing in a compact mass, the weaker ones in
the middle. They had no thought nor fear of me apparently; they
showed no sign of anger or uneasiness. Indeed, they barely moved aside
as I snowshoed up, in plain sight, without any precaution whatever.
And these were the same animals that had fled upon my approach at
daylight, and that had escaped me all day with marvelous cunning.
As with other deer, the storm is Megaleep's natural protector. When it
comes he thinks that he is safe; that nobody can see him; that the
falling snow will fill his tracks and kill his scent; and that
whatever follows must speedily seek cover for itself. So he gives up
watching, and lies down where he will. So far as his natural enemies
are concerned, he is safe in this; for lynx and wolf and panther, seek
shelter with a falling barometer. They can neither see nor smell; and
they are all afraid. I have often noticed that among all animals and
birds, from the least to the greatest, there is always a truce when
the storms are out.
But the most curious thing I ever stumbled into was a caribou school.
That sounds queer; but it is more common in the wilderness than one
thinks. All gregarious animals have perfectly well defined social
regulations, which the young must learn and respect. To learn them,
they go to school in their own interesting way.
The caribou I am speaking of now are all woodland caribou--larger,
finer animals every way than the barren-ground caribou of the desolate
unwooded regions farther north. In summer they live singly, rearing
their young in deep forest seclusions. There each one does as he
pleases. So when you meet a caribou in summer, he is a different
creature, and has more unknown and curious ways than when he runs with
the herd in midwinter. I remember a solitary old bull that lived on
the mountain-side opposite my camp one summer, a most interesting
mixture of fear and boldness, of reserve and intense curiosity. After
I had hunted him a few times, and he found that my purpose was wholly
peaceable, he took to hunting me in the same way, just to find out who
I was, and what queer thing I was doing. Sometimes I would see him at
sunset on a dizzy cliff across the lake, watching for the curl of
smoke or the coming of a canoe. And when I dove in for a swim and went
splashing, dog-paddle way, about the island where my tent was, he
would walk about in the greatest excitement, and start a dozen times
to come down; but always he ran back for another look, as if
fascinated. Again he would come down on a burned point near the deep
hole where I was fishing, and, hiding his body in the underbrush,
would push his horns up into the bare branches of a withered shrub,
so as to make them inconspicuous, and stand watching me. As long as he
was quiet, it was impossible to see him there; but I could always make
him start nervously by flashing a looking-glass, or flopping a fish in
the water, or whistling a jolly Irish jig. And when I tied a bright
tomato can to a string and set it whirling round my head, or set my
handkerchief for a flag on the end of my trout rod, then he could not
stand it another minute, but came running down to the shore, to stamp,
and fidget, and stare nervously, and scare himself with twenty alarms
while trying to make up his mind to swim out and satisfy his burning
desire to know all about it. But I am forgetting the caribou schools.
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