The principal excitement of the morning was a glimpse of a Kentucky warbler, a bird most peculiarly desired. I had finished my jaunt, and was standing beside the bramble patch not far from the railway, where I had seen the hooded warbler the day before, when the splendid creature flashed into sight, saw me, uttered a volley of quick, clear notes, and vanished up the hillside. I ran after him, but might as well have remained where I was. "He is a beauty!" I find written in my notebook. And so he is, clothed in lustrous olive and the most gorgeous of yellows with trimmings of black, all in the best of taste, with nothing patchy, nothing fantastic or even fanciful. I was again impressed with the abundance of chats, indigo-birds, and white-eyed vireos. Bachman sparrows were numerous, also, in appropriate localities,—dry and bushy,—and I noted a bluebird, a yellow-throated vireo, and, shouting from a dead treetop, a great crested flycatcher.
My most vivid recollection of this second visit, however, is of the power of the sun, an old enemy of mine, by whom, in my ignorance of spring weather in Tennessee, I allowed myself to be taken at a cruel noonday disadvantage. Even now, in the deep frigidity of a Massachusetts winter, I cannot think of Missionary Ridge without seeing again those long stretches of burning sunshine, wherein the least spot of shade was like a palm in the desert. In every such shelter I used to stand awhile, bareheaded; then, marking the next similar haven, so many rods ahead, I would hoist my umbrella and push forward, cringing at every step as if I were crossing a field under fire. Possibly I exaggerate, but, if I do, it is very little; and though it be an abuse of an exquisite poem, I say over to myself again and again a couplet of Miss Guiney's:—
"Weather on a sunny ridge,
Showery weather, far from here."
In truth, early as the season was, the excessive heat, combined with a trying dog-day humidity, sadly circumscribed all my Tennessee rambles. As for my umbrella, my obligations to it were such that nothing but a dread of plagiarism has restrained me from entitling this sketch "An Umbrella on Missionary Ridge." Nature never intended me for a tropical explorer. Often I did nothing more than seek a shady retreat and stay there, letting the birds come to me, if they would.
Improved after this indolent fashion, one of the hottest of my forenoons became also one of the most enjoyable. I left the car midway up the Ridge,—at the angle of the Y,—and, passing my thrasher's blackberry tangle and descending a wooded slope, found myself unexpectedly in a pleasant place, half wood, half grassy field, through which ran a tiny streamlet, the first one I had seen in this dry and thirsty land. Near the streamlet, on the edge of the wood, quite by itself, stood a cabin of most forlorn appearance, with a garden patch under the window,—if there was a window, as to which I do not remember, and the chances seem against it,—the whole closely and meanly surrounded by a fence. In the door stood an aged white woman, looking every whit as old and forlorn as the cabin, with a tall mastiff on one side of her and a black cat on the other.
"Your dog and cat are good friends," I remarked, feeling it polite to speak even to a stranger in so lonesome a spot.
"Yes," she answered gruffly, "they're good friends, only once in a while he wants to kill her."
She said nothing more, and her manner did not encourage further attempts at neighborly intercourse; but as I passed the cabin now and then during the forenoon, the birds leading me about, I heard her muttering often and at considerable length to her hens and ducks. Evidently she enjoyed conversation as well as most people, only she liked to pick her own company. She was "Aunt Tilly," I learned afterwards, and had lived there by herself for many years; one of the characters of the city, a fortune-teller, whose professional services were in frequent request.
In this favored nook, especially along the watercourse, were many birds, some of them at home for the summer, but the greater part, no doubt, lying over for a day or two on their long northward journey. Not one of them but was interesting to me here in a new country, however familiar it might have become in New England. Here were at least eleven kinds of warblers: black-polls of both sexes, black-throated blues, chestnut-sides, myrtle-birds, golden warblers, black-and-white creepers, redstarts (have we anything handsomer?), Maryland yellow-throats, blue golden-wings, chats, and Kentuckies. Here were blue-gray gnatcatchers, bluebirds, wood thrushes, veeries, an olive-backed thrush, catbirds, thrashers, Carolina wrens, tufted titmice, a Carolina chickadee, summer tanagers uncounted, orchard orioles, field sparrows, chippers, a Bachman sparrow (unseen), a cardinal, a chewink, flocks of indigo-birds and goldfinches, red-eyed vireos, white-eyed vireos, a yellow-throated vireo, kingbirds, and a crested flycatcher.