At nine o’clock, we lighted a torch and went to examine our lines; and it was my good fortune to haul out not less than forty-one trout, weighing from one to two pounds a-piece. These, we put into a spring of very cold water, which bubbled from the earth a few paces from our camping place, and then retired to repose. Branches of hemlock constituted our couch, and my station was between Peter and White Yankee. Little did I dream, when I first saw these two bipeds, that I should ever have them for my bed-fellows; but who can tell what shall be on the morrow? My friends were in the land of Nod in less than a dozen minutes after we had retired; but it was hard for me to go to sleep in the midst of the wild scene which surrounded me. There I lay, flat on my back, a stone and my cap for a pillow, and wrapt in a blanket, with my nose exposed to the chilly night air. And what pictures did my fancy conjure up, as I looked upon the army of trunks around me, glistening in the fire-light! One moment they were a troop of Indians from the spirit-land, come to revisit again the hunting grounds of their fathers, and weeping because the white man had desecrated their soil; and again, I fancied them to be a congress of wild animals, assembled to try, execute, and devour us, for the depredations our fellows had committed upon their kind during the last one hundred years. By and by, a star peered upon me from between the branches of a tree, and my thoughts ascended heavenward. And now, my eyes twinkled and blinked in sympathy with the star, and I was a dreamer.
An hour after the witching time of night, I was startled from my sleep by a bellowing halloo from Peter, who said it was time to examine the lines again. Had you heard the echoes which were then awakened, far and near, you would have thought yourself in enchanted land. But there were living answers to that shout, for a frightened fox began to bark, an owl commenced its horrible hootings, a partridge its drumming, and a wolf its howl. There was not a breeze stirring, and
“Nought was seen, in the vault on high,
But the moon, and the stars, and a cloudless sky,
And a river of white in the welkin blue.”
Peter and Yankee went out to haul in the trout, but I remained on shore to attempt a drawing, by moonlight, of the lake before me. The opposite side of the mountain, with its dark tangled forest, was perfectly mirrored in the waters below, the whole seeming as solid and variegated as a tablet of Egyptian marble. The canoe with its inmates noiselessly pursued its way, making the stillness more profound. In the water at my feet I distinctly saw lizards sporting about, and I could not but wonder why such reptiles were ever created. I thought, with the Ancient Mariner,
“A thousand slimy things lived on,
And so did I.”
Again did we retire to rest, slumbering until the break of day. We then partook of a substantial trout breakfast, gathered up our plunder, and with about one hundred handsome trout started for home.
The accidents we met with during the night were harmless, though somewhat ridiculous. A paper of matches, which Peter carried in his breeches’ pocket, took fire, and gave him such a scorching that he bellowed lustily. White Yankee, in his restless slumber, rolled so near our watch-fire, that he barely escaped with one corner of his blanket, the remainder having been consumed. As for me, I only fell into the water among the lizards, while endeavouring to reach the end of a log, which extended into the lake. In descending the mountain, we shot three partridges, and confoundedly frightened a fox; and by the middle of the afternoon, were quietly pursuing our usual avocations among our fellow-men of the lower world.