Travels in a Tree-top

by Charles C. Abbott

And grin through the grate of his spiky teeth.”

With such an uncanny keeper, I was held a prisoner. At last I struck it with an oar to beat it back, and rocked the frail boat until I feared plunging into the deep water and deeper mud beneath. Deep water? It suddenly occurred to me to try its depth, and the truth was plain. I was far from the channel, and might with safety have waded to the shore. As usual, I had rashly jumped at conclusions. The mouth of an inflowing creek was near at hand, and this sunken tree, a relic of some forgotten freshet, had been lying here in the mud for several years. The tide lifted and let fall the trunk, but the root-mass was still strongly embedded. I knew the spot of old, and now, fearing nothing, was rational again.

Such sunken trees, however, are well calculated to alarm the unthinking. It is said of one yet lying in the mud of Crosswicks Creek, that it rose so quickly once as to overturn a boat. This is not improbable. That occurrence, if true, happened a century ago, and the same tree has since badly frightened more than one old farmer. I am told this of one of them who had anchored his boat here one frosty October morning and commenced fishing. While half asleep, or but half sober, the tree slowly raised up and tilted the boat so that its occupant felt compelled to swim. His view of the offending monster was much like my own fevered vision of to-day. He not only swam ashore, but ran a mile over a soft marsh. To him the sea-serpent was a reality, although he saw it in the creek.

It is of interest to note that among the early settlers of this region, for at least three generations, the impression was prevalent that there might be some monster lurking in the deep holes of the creek or in the river. The last of the old hunters and fishermen of this region, who had spent all his life in a boat or prowling along shore, was ever talking of a “king tortle” that for forty years had defied all his efforts to capture it. “Mostly, it only shows its top shell, but I have seen it fair and square, head and legs, and I don’t know as I care to get very close, neither.” This was his unvaried remark whenever I broached the subject. To have suggested that it was a sunken log, or in some other way tried to explain the matter, would only have brought about his ill will. I once attempted it, very cautiously, but he effectually shut me up by remarking, “When this here creek runs dry and you can walk over its bottom, you’ll larn a thing or two that ain’t down in your books yet, and ain’t goin’ to be.” The old man was right. I do not believe in “king tortles,” but there certainly is “a thing or two” not yet in the books. Stay! How big do our snappers grow? Is the father of them all still hiding in the channel of Crosswicks Creek?

A description in an old manuscript journal, of the general aspect of the country as seen from the river, bears upon this subject of strange wild beasts and monsters of the deep, as well as on that of sunken trees that endangered passing shallops.

“As we pass up the river,” this observant writer records, "we are so shut in by the great trees that grow even to the edge of the water, that what may lye in the interior is not to be known. That there be fertile land, the Indians tell us, but their narrow paths are toilsome to travel and there are none [of these people] now that seem willing to guide us. As we approached ffarnsworth’s the channel was often very close to the shore, and at one time we were held by the great trees that overhung the bank and by one that had been fallen a long time and was now lodged in the water. As I looked towards the shore, I exclaimed, ‘Here we are indeed in a great wilderness. What strangeness is concealed in this boundless wood? what wonder may at any time issue from it, or fierce monster not be lurking in the waters beneath us?’ Through the day the cries of both birds and beasts were heard, but not always. It was often so strangely quiet that we were more affected thereby than by the sounds that at times issued forth. At night there was great howling, as we were told, of wolves, and the hooting of owls, and often there plunged into the stream wild stags that swam near to our boat. But greater than all else, to our discomfort, were the great sunken trunks of trees that were across the channel, where the water was of no great depth."

What a change! and would that this old traveller could revisit the Delaware to-day. My boat is free again and the mists are gone. Through the trees are sifted the level sunbeams. There is at least a chance now to compare notes. The forest is now a field, the trackless marsh a meadow; wild life is largely a thing of the past; silence, both day and night, replaces sound. No, not that; but only the minor sounds are left. There are still the cry of the fish-hawk and the sweet song of the thrush. No stags now swim the river, but there remain the mink and the musk-rat. It has not been long since I saw a migration of meadow-mice, and at night, I am sure, many an animal dares to breast the stream, a mile wide though it be. Too cunning to expose itself by day, it risks its life at night; and how tragic the result when, nearly at the journey’s end, it is seized by a lurking foe; dragged down, it may be, by a snake or a turtle!

The world is just as full of tragedy as ever, and, let us hope, as full of comedy. In a bit of yonder marsh, above which bends the tall wild rice, there is daily enacted scene after scene as full of import as those which caused the very forest to tremble when the wolf and panther quarrelled over the elk or deer that had fallen.

It has been insisted upon that a goal-less journey is necessarily a waste of time. If on foot, we must keep forever on the go; if in a boat, we must keep bending to the oars. It is this miserable fallacy that makes so many an out-door man and woman lose more than half of that for which they went into the fields. Who cares if you did see a chippy at every turn and flushed a bittern at the edge of the marsh? If you had been there before them, and these birds did the walking, you would have gone home the wiser. It is not the mere fact that there are birds that concerns us, but what are they doing? why are they doing it? This the town-pent people are ever anxious to know, and the facts cannot be gathered if you are forever on the move. Suppose I rush across the river and back, what have I seen? The bottom of the boat. I came to see the river and the sky above, and if this is of no interest to the reader, let him turn the leaf.

Does every storm follow the track of the sun? As the sun rose there were clouds in the east and south and a haziness over the western sky. Had I asked a farmer as to the weather probabilities, he would have looked everywhere but due north. Why does he always ignore that quarter? There may be great banks of cloud there, but they go for nothing. “Sou-east” and “sou-west” are forever rung in your ears, but never a word of the north. Sometimes I have thought it may be for this reason that about half the time the farmer is all wrong, and the heaviest rains come when he is most sure that the day will be clear.