AT THE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY.
Wednesday, December 23, dawned under a damp sky. Tripyramid kept on his nightcap, and patches of mist clung to the dark precipice of Passaconaway. The mountains looked higher and more threatening than on previous days, and they seemed closer to us than when the sun shone. A whisper of falling drops and settling snow ruffled the morning calm. Nevertheless, patches of blue sky showed in the west, and once or twice a silvery spot in the clouds suggested the sun’s burning through. We went first to see our favorite flock of birds at the cattle-trough in the pasture. They were there in full force, nearly if not quite a hundred strong. They allowed me to come within about twenty feet of them, and to watch them narrowly through my glass. Rather more than half were red crossbills. Of the remainder, two thirds were pine finches, and one third goldfinches. No red-polls were to be seen. The coloring in the crossbills was amazingly diverse. There were very brilliant males with cinnabar tints wherever such color is ever found. From this maximum of intensity their coloring graded downward through partial red markings on the one hand, and through gradually fading red markings on the other. I saw one bird with red on his rump only. The fading from red to yellow yielded many gradations of red and yellow or orange down to pure gold. The brown birds were the more numerous, and they seemed to have various combinations of light and dark, with now and then suggestions of bright tints. In some individuals the mandibles crossed in one way, and in others the opposite way. In size the crossbills varied widely. Often, in glancing quickly at a group, I mistook the smaller, duller birds for pine finches. A dozen times in as many minutes the flock whirled upwards and round and round, showering the air with their delicious medley music. Generally from three to six old birds remained in one of the two spruces near the fence by the trough, and a sharp call from them brought the flock down again like a fall of hail.
When we had walked a mile up the valley a shower struck us, and we waited a few moments under the shelter of an old house from which the wall boards had been removed. We heard sweet bird notes, but could not locate the singers. When we turned to go, however, a flock of sixteen snow-buntings rose from a field where they had been feeding in the yellow grasses, and vibrated away with merry calls until swallowed up in fog and rain.
The wasting of the snow under the hot sun of Monday and the cloudy sky but mild air of Tuesday had left many plants and dried flower-stalks exposed to view. Plum-colored masses of berry bushes encroached upon the wide expanse of snow as headlands reach out into a calm sea. Tiny forests of wiry grass reared their heads above the snow. In color they were what is called “sandy.” Goldenrod and aster stems, holding aloft dry and brittle suggestions of long-lost flowers; the heads of brunella, looking like chess castles, and of the Indian pipe, upright and pineapple-shaped; and many delicate hairlike stems from which all trace of leaf and flower had departed, broke the evenness of the snow fields, and were beautiful in an unassuming, unconscious, unintentional way. Indeed, many of them had never shone with beauty before. In summer, submerged in the wilderness of green things which crowd the unplowed intervale, they could not have been found by the eye of any one in chance passing. But in winter, the time of their nominal beauty gone, they lingered in their old age, and looked more beautiful in their bleached simplicity than those summer flowers which never gave them a chance to reveal what was in them.
At the end of the intervale, instead of plunging into the woods where our barred owl lived, we turned southward towards the foot of Passaconaway. The rough road led through the forest to a saw-mill under the shoulder of the first ridge of the mountains. Downes Brook had been partially dammed to form a pond, upon which hundreds of logs lay awaiting their fate. At the foot of the dam stood the mill. Its lower story was an engine-room. A steam-engine of considerable power worked four saws, a planer, and an endless chain used to draw in logs from the ice. At the dam end these logs were being drawn in upon the floor, measured, and marked. Then they went to the first and largest saw, which cut off their slabs, reduced them to boards or planks, and sent them along to the second saw to have their ends squared. From the second saw they went to the third, where their sides were made equal, and hence through the planer, out at the lower end of the mill, down a chute to a platform where they were piled, ready to be hauled away. The fourth saw was used to cut the slabs and edge-cuttings into the right lengths for fuel; for not only the engine demon in the under story fed on wood, but all the people in the intervale burned slabs. About twelve men were employed in the upper part of the mill, some Americans, some French Canadians, and some Irishmen. One young Frenchman was a picture of dirty beauty and health. His jet-black hair, reeking with oil, was plastered in a curve over his forehead. His mustache was curling, and his snapping eyes, dark skin, rosy cheeks, and powerful but rather gross body made a striking picture for a day laborer.
Leaving the mill with its distracting noise, we ascended the main logging road towards Passaconaway. It follows Downes Brook southward, now clinging to one hillside, then crossing the ice-bound torrent by a rude but massive bridge of spruce logs to stay for a while on the opposite bank. On each side the timber had been cut and hauled away. The survival of the unfittest is the rule in the forest after the lumber thief has been through it. He leaves the crooked, the feeble, and the diseased trees, and packs around their roots the fertilizing branches and tops of the logs which he hauls away. On our way up we met several teams coming down the slippery, sloppy road. Two strong Canadian horses, low sleds, three great logs chained together and to the sleds, and an oily, tobacco-chewing French Canadian made up a team. We stopped and talked to one driver, who said that if the snow went off they would keep on with their hauling, using the runners on the bare ground. While he chatted with us he fed his nigh horse on pieces of chewing tobacco, which the horse took from his fingers or bit from the plug. We were told later that this is a common form of attention for the drivers to show their favorite horses. The horse swallowed the tobacco. About half a mile above the mill we came to the logging camp. There was a compact log stable, a log smithy manned by a sturdy Frenchman in moccasins who spoke very little English, and a living-house made of slabs covered with tarred paper well battened down. The house stood on a ribbon of ground between the road and the steep edge of the torrent. Entering through a low shed at the southern or upper end of the shanty, we found ourselves in the kitchen and dining-room. The room contained two cook-stoves and three long, narrow board tables with benches facing them. The tables were set for thirty-five men, allowing about twenty inches of space for each man. We were welcomed by the cook, a New Englander, who boasted of having cooked in lumber camps for twenty years. He prided himself on his bread, and cut a loaf to show its quality. I never ate better bread anywhere. The dishes on the table were simple,—tin plates, tin cups, bottles of vinegar, pitchers of maple syrup, tins holding mountains of yellow butter, and plates piled high with “fried holes,” as doughnuts are graphically termed. Baked beans are a staple dish, but I noticed a barrel of pork at the door, and lying on the woodpile a big bundle of codfish and a side of beef certified as good by the Hon. Jere. Rusk.
The sleeping-room of the camp was not attractive. It was dark, hot, stuffy in odor, and overcrowded. Rude bunks, three tiers deep, lined the side walls. The men turn into these pens with their clothes on, often wet with rain or snow. Teamsters are roused at four A. M.; the rest of a “crew” somewhat later. In winter, four A. M. and midnight are equally gloomy, and if either is colder it is the morning hour. The cook said he could remember but one case of serious illness in his logging camps. The grip, he said, seldom kept a man from work more than one or two days. He expressed great fondness for birds, and spoke of the daily visits of crossbills, and in some years of moose-birds. “They know their friends, as most dumb beasts do,” he declared, and went on to tell of a terrible storm of snow and sleet which came one winter, threatening death to his pets. “I just opened my camp doors and called and whistled to my birds, and in they came, dozens of ’em, until every beam and perch in the camp was full of ’em.”
We strolled up the road for a mile or more beyond the camp. At several points deposits of logs had been made at the sides of the road. Several hundred logs lay in each pile. Near by, hemlock bark was stacked in long rows, flanking the road. We crossed the torrent twice on spruce bridges, and each time gained a magnificent view of Passaconaway. It was framed in black clouds, rushing masses of vapor, and dark hillsides still laden with forests. In the foreground was the foaming stream, boulder-choked, bounding towards us. From this side Passaconaway shows no peak; it is simply a somewhat worn cube, to whose precipitous faces the forests cling and the snows freeze. Its coloring is dark in any light, but as we saw it through the gathering storm of that late December day a more forbidding mountain mass could hardly be imagined. It was so near us, yet so high above us; so black, so cold, so lonely, yet so full of nature’s voices, the wailing of wind, the cruel rush of waters, the weird creaking of strained trees. The stream, with its greenish waters hurling themselves over the boulders and fretting against the ice sheets projecting from the banks, seemed like a messenger rushing headlong from the mountain to warn us back from impending danger.
Resting for a while under the shelter of a giant hemlock, we called the birds. Two or three chickadees and two kinglets came to us, but they were subdued by the storm and shy about getting wet. Then we walked briskly homeward, the rain falling in earnest during the latter part of the way. A snowy fog rose from all parts of the valley, spreading most rapidly from the western end. The flat fields of snow vanished first; then the damp veil crept up the dark spruces and hid their tops; and finally mountain peak after mountain peak surrendered to the rising tide, and we were left alone in the dense fog with only a narrow circle of steaming snow around us. As the day wore on, rain fell faster and harder, the wind rose, it grew colder, and the blackness of the winter night would have been terrible but for the peace and comfort within doors. On such a night the deer in their “yards” must shiver with the chilling dampness; the grouse must find the snow too wet to sleep in; and foxes and rabbits, if they leave their dens and forms at all, must regret the hunger which drives them out. Where are the crossbills and siskins? I wish that I knew and could find them out, and take a friendly look at their ruffled feathers, their heads tucked under their wings, and perhaps dozens of their plump little bodies snuggled together in a dark, dry spruce.