The wheels grated once more on the stony track, and on we went to Campbell's hostelry.
Very many of the pleasantest days in life are the most poverty-stricken in regard to incident. In all this week, only one episode occurred which would make you really laugh, and that, I regret to say, Shin would not like me to relate. Do not infer though, that, because the current of the trip was placid, it necessarily was dull. So far from such being the case, we did not pass a single dull half-hour. An exhilarating freshness, an evanescent crispness is in this mountain air, which absolutely defies dulness. Moreover, we had started in that state of helpless good humour in which anything serves as food for laughter. It was not recorded that any one made a sensible remark during the whole drive; we talked pure nonsense exclusively. In this congenial spirit we were encouraged by the fact that, our wooden-visaged, saturnine driver—an eminently matter-of-fact and sensible man—preserved, throughout, impenetrable reserve. He sat on the box-seat in dignified silence, a mute protest against the egregious imbecility of human nature as exemplified in ourselves. Evidently he had been designed without any reference to the rules of risible acoustics. He was angular and flat all over. People constructed on this principle are not adapted for the expression of merriment. If he ever had laughed, the displacement of solemnity would have been so tremendous, that he would never have recovered his centre of gravity, and would probably have died mentally upside down, and mad. He only made one spontaneous observation during the excursion. We were talking of chipmunks and squirrels.
"Chipmunks——" he ejaculated. And then he paused and thought for a while. "Chipmunks," he resumed, later in the day, "is alegant food."
Up the hill we were slowly toiling towards Campbell's, when a ragged boy in a broad-leafed hat, seated upon a ragged pony, whose tail coquetted with his heels, came jogging on the down-grade towards us.
"Say!" exclaimed Shin, "now when this fellow passes, we'll all take off our hats to him. Don't say anything; just bow and watch him."
Accordingly, when the boy drew near we greeted him with three sweeping bows. Probably he had never seen any one bow before; evidently he was not familiar with this form of salutation. He pulled up, and was staring after us in dumb astonishment, when, a thought seemed to strike him. Removing his own hat, he carefully examined it. But there was nothing the matter with that, and he rammed it on again with an air of dogged perplexity. Anon, he shouted something—our inability to catch which was perhaps not to be deplored; and when, some minutes later, we turned a corner and lost sight of him, he was still where we had left him, gazing after us.
À propos des bottes: this unkempt, young mountaineer possessed aquiline features of the purest type; and it appears to me, as a superficial observer, open to correction, that these will distinguish the American of the future. The fusion of races in America is remarkably rapid. Distinctive physical peculiarities vanish not less swiftly than do national idiosyncrasies in character. And the mould in which these disappear is one that bears a striking resemblance to that formerly prevalent among the higher class Indian nations of the continent. The typical American is aquiline-featured, stern or impassible in expression of countenance, spare of frame, chary of speech, impassive in demeanour, endued with unusual self-control and determination. But these traits—which, if further example were necessary, could be multiplied—were all once distinctive of the Indian; and that they should reassert themselves thus uniformly in the descendants of the divers alien races settled in America, opens a physiological problem of unusual magnitude and interest. Doubtless, in process of time, the citizen of the republic will become tinged with copper. A tone of brass is already noticeable occasionally.
Next morning saw us early under way; and during all the forenoon the road led through rocky passes, or was blasted in the steep sides of sombre valleys. On we drove amidst a network of crumbled light, whose shadowed meshes were cast by the vast trunks of cedars, sugar and yellow pines, red and silver firs, tamaracks, and spruces. Nothing in the forest races can match the stately beauty of these straight-limbed giants, clad in dark plumes. They are an order of knights, a dynasty of kings amongst trees. Where they have fallen, they lie like vanquished Titans, and seem even grander stretched out beneath clinging palls of moss than when upreared, archetypes of strength and grace, they toss their quilled foliage in the winds, and tower majestically above the earth.
Ever and anon the continuity of their solemn crypts and corridors was interrupted by some still glen, a cache of dreams and summer beauty. And here—scattered amidst enormous boulders, or gray and grim, or worked with gorgeous blazonry in lichens—red-leaved sumachs, golden-foliaged aspens, and masses of flushed flowers blent in the rich arabesque of purple, brown, and russet bracken, had writ an idyl in a silent language, whose words were colour, and whose characters were leafy tracery, delicate and ever new. Yonder, by the lucent gleam of sunbeams, its tinted poetry was touched with fire, and there in the pearly shadows of midday it was yet coolly sleeping.
Long must have been the list of killed and wounded in the Quail Gazette after that morning's work. At times the forest rang and re-echoed like a choice covert in England. Towards noon, having finished a beat before the others were ready, I walked on ahead of the buggy to a turnpike gate to ask for a glass of water. Instead of a crusty old gate-keeper I was agreeably surprised to see, tripping bare-headed from the neighbouring cottage, a pretty dark girl with black eyes, a "peart" air, and a smart sang de bœuf bow under her chin. In the course of some conversation which ensued I mentioned that Mr. Shin was on the road, and inquired whether she knew him. A smile rose immediately on her cherry lips.