The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had been made in a slight depression: the under rubber blanket spread in this had prevented the rain from soaking into the ground, and we had been lying in what was in fact a well-contrived bathtub.While Old Phelps was pulling himself together, and we were wringing some gallons of water out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the "squawk," and what bird was possessed of such a voice.It was not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of the woods, larger than the domestic animal, and an ugly customer, who is fond of fish, and carries a pelt that is worth two or three dollars in the market.
Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap; and he is altogether hateful in his ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that is heard in the woods.We shall remember him as one of the least pleasant phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the storm, fearing any moment the advent to one of us of the grimmest messenger.
We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, and, before the shades had yet lifted from the saturated bushes, pursued our march.
It was a relief to be again in motion, although our progress was slow, and it was a question every rod whether the guide could go on.
We had the day before us; but if we did not find a boat at the inlet a day might not suffice, in the weak condition of the guide, to extricate us from our ridiculous position.There was nothing heroic in it; we had no object: it was merely, as it must appear by this time, a pleasure excursion, and we might be lost or perish in it without reward and with little sympathy.We had something like a hour and a half of stumbling through the swamp when suddenly we stood in the little trail! Slight as it was, it appeared to us a very Broadway to Paradise if broad ways ever lead thither.Phelps hailed it and sank down in it like one reprieved from death.But the boat?
Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a mile down to the inlet.
The boat was there.Our shout to the guide would have roused him out of a death-slumber.He came down the trail with the agility of an aged deer: never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as that shout.It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-mile row through the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in the morning breeze.The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open to the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all the mountain-ranges we had a sense of escape and freedom that almost made the melancholy scene lovely.
How lightly past hardship sits upon us! All the misery of the night vanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits him in the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire, solicitude about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffering, and willingness to hear the now growing tale of our adventure.Then came, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went, and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep.
'74
HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND
BY A READER OF "'93"
New England is the battle-ground of the seasons.It is La Vendee.
To conquer it is only to begin the fight.When it is completely subdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever.
What is this New England? A country? No: a camp.It is alternately invaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of the tropics.Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoasts are fringed with mosquitoes.There is for a third of the year a contest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the gulf.The result of this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw.It is the normal condition in New England.The New-Englander is a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable.
This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made.A person thoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing.Look at the Bongos.
Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation.The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes to get warm.Edwards made his theology.
Thank God, New England is not in Paris!
Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice and walruses, make it unpleasant for New England.This icy cover, like the lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down, that is winter.This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream.The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the equator,--a white knight of the South going up to battle the giant of the North.The two meet in New England, and have it out there.
This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly a delusion as to New England.For Ireland it is quite another thing.
Potatoes ripen in Ireland before they are planted in New England.
That is the reason the Irish emigrate--they desire two crops the same year.The Gulf Stream gets shunted off from New England by the formation of the coast below: besides, it is too shallow to be of any service.Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and fill all the New-England air with the chill of death till June: after that the fogs drift down from Newfoundland.There never was such a mockery as this Gulf Stream.It is like the English influence on France, on Europe.Pitt was an iceberg.
Still New England survives.To what purpose? I say, as an example:
the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy is an anachronism in civilization.He is no longer poor, and he is not a boy.In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses'
