CHAPTER IV.
AN ADVENTURE WITH A BEAR—AN EXTRAORDINARY ECHO—I
AM ATTACKED WITH A FEVER, AND SUBSEQUENTLY DRIVEN FROM MY HUT.
"Give me, indulgent gods—with mind serene,
And guiltless heart—to range the sylvan scene;
No splendid poverty, no smiling care,
No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur there."
I had now become a sportsman—a Nimrod—my chief delight being found in the use of my bow and arrows. Thus armed, I ranged the forest, or laid in covert, to destroy any game which might come in my way. My propensity for killing, however, soon led me into a scrape, the escape from which nearly cost me my life; yet the lesson was thrown away on me, for it in no way abated my desire to shoot and eat the flesh of birds.
Early one morning I had taken my station behind a large tree, from which I discharged an arrow at a mocking-bird. No sooner had the arrow quitted the string, than I descried a bear, feeding on ants' nests, and that in a direct line between myself and the bird shot at. The arrow passed close by his ear; it might have struck him: be this as it may, the bear instantly began to descend the tree, showing evident signs of his intention to revenge the insult.
Not being disposed to confront such an enemy in an angry mood, I instantly took to my heels; but had not proceeded far, before the shaggy monster was near overtaking me. In this extremity I ascended a tree, confident of being as good a climber as Bruin was. I had, however, scarcely reached the lowest extending branch, before the enraged beast was close on me. Fortunately, I had in my flight retained possession of my stick; and as the bear had no means of supporting himself but by clinging to the trunk of the tree with his claws, I applied my staff with so much vigour to his feet, that he was constrained to drop to the ground, whereupon his rage was great. He then took a turn or two round the base of the tree to cool himself, gave a growl, and seated himself under it, fixing his eyes on me. In this position the disappointed monster remained, on his hind-quarters, seven hours, watching my movements; till at length, growing weary of his presence, and having read somewhere of the effect of the human voice, I cried out loudly, mentioning several names, as if calling for assistance. When speaking of the storm, I said that the thunder rolled with ten thousand voices. The cause, however, of its multiplied tones, was reserved for this adventure to make known. As I called out, I was utterly astonished to hear my own words repeated several times in succession;—the bear started on his feet; and after looking round, as if in fear of an attack, took himself off at his utmost speed.
An alarming echo
Assured that I had heard human voices, I became more agitated than when in company with the bear. It may appear anomalous; it is nevertheless true, that the prospect, or thought, of meeting with human beings in these wilds, always elicited agitation, or, more properly, terror.
The joy that hope brought of my emancipation was always mixed with an alloy of indefinable dread of some coming evil. I remained in the tree about an hour after the bear had departed, continuing to amuse myself with the exercise of the voice, and listening to the repetitions of its sounds. At length, when assured that the bear did not contemplate a renewal of the attack, I descended from the tree, and again raised my voice, and was again surprised to find that I had no response. This struck me as very mysterious; and instead of seeking for natural causes of the phenomena, I abandoned myself to superstitious fears, and persuaded myself that I was on enchanted ground, while my mind indulged in endless chimeras. Every effect is preceded by a cause, was a sentence I had often heard my father repeat; and as it recurred to my memory, I again ascended the tree, and repeated the experiments, alternately, for some time, on the ground and in the tree. The result was always the same, the voice being reverberated when in the tree, and not so when on the ground. Again and again. I turned the matter over in the mind, and could come to no other conclusion than that there were persons somewhere in the neighbourhood, who could hear me from the tree, but were too far off to hear my voice when surrounded with the underwood on the ground. I now thought it my duty to find out the persons from whom I supposed the sounds came, and was actually preparing to start in search of them, when it suddenly flashed on my mind that I had heard a similar phenomenon under a bridge near my own native village, which the boys called an echo; yet as that gave only one response, or echo, I was still perplexed to make out a cause for hearing so many. This phenomenon, however, soon became a considerable source of amusement to me, and by shifting my positions I found several series of echoes: in some places the reverberations were six and sevenfold, and in others they were so numerous as to run into indistinctness. For a considerable time subsequently it was my wont, on a Sunday, to ascend a tree after my devotions, and sing a line or two, or a verse of a psalm which I knew, when the effect was something like a number of voices in a place of worship, though the ear could not compass the innumerable combination of reverberations. When the echo was peculiarly distinct and near, and then taken up and repeated at a distance, it conveyed to my imagination the idea of aerial spirits answering each other. It was thus that the astonishing multiplied reverberations of the thunder in this region were accounted for—namely, the transmission of its sound from point to point.