The wanderings and fortunes of some German emigrants

by Friedrich Gerstäcker

Siebert was especially frightened, and although, at first, he endeavoured to conceal it, as well as he could, yet, in the course of the day, he was unable to keep up this disguise, for the thunder and lightning seemed to have no end; he therefore candidly acknowledged his fears, and affirmed that it must be a presentiment that he should be struck by lightning.

Wolfgang laughed. "No, my dear Mr. Siebert, do not make yourself uneasy; the old belief, that lightning prefers to strike trees, and other high objects, is certainly well founded, and with us in the woods, here, it always lights upon a tree; indeed, I should like to know where else it is to go to; it would be quite a feat for it to pass into the earth, without striking one of them. No, I have heard of a good number of accidents, by falling trees or branches, under which men have been buried, or at least crippled, and cattle, more particularly, are often thus destroyed, but I have never yet heard of a man having been struck by lightning, at least, not in the woods. In the hills, there are a kind of natural lightning conductors, I mean the hickories or white walnut trees, although the inconstant fluid not unfrequently has its joke with some old oak. But it prefers the former tree, and I have found them split down to the very roots. But if I am not mistaken, we are approaching the hills, the rushes become thinner, and the soil is getting undulating. Now we have the prospect of surprising my friend at home this evening, and there we may rest ourselves for a day, to make up for our exertions."

Wolfgang had concluded correctly; the last slope of the hills stretched to where they stood, and thenceforward their road became better, as they forsook the swampy hollows, and remained at the border of the higher land.

The farm of Stevenson (the name of Wolfgang's friend) lay, according to his calculation, about five miles further off; but it was not until nearly evening that they reached the fence, and with it the boundary of a well-cultivated field of Indian corn, more than ten acres in extent, before which Herbold stood still, quite surprised and delighted.

Wolfgang, however, did not leave him much time to look about him, but hurried his companions on towards the house, so as to enable them to dry themselves, and to get something warm, for he feared that the other two, not yet inured to the climate, might not escape with a mere cold, but perhaps get the fever or ague.

Stevenson received them hospitably and heartily; his daughters set about making some good, strong, warm coffee for them directly, while his wife got out everything in the shape of clothes, either old or new, and ere long, the wet and hungry wanderers were seated, dry and refreshed, before a warm fire, so that even Herbold confessed that he had not felt more comfortable for many a year past.

Indeed, Stevenson's family seemed to be a pattern of American domestic life;—the interior of the house, simple, it is true, and even poor, was as bright and clean as one could have wished it; the utensils shone and glittered again, and the mother with her two grown-up daughters, clad in the homespun grey of the western forests, looked like the ideal of a worthy matron, surrounded and supported by youth and beauty. The strangers soon felt happy in their neighbourhood, and it only required a few words of encouragement to make them move about with as much freedom and ease as though they were at home in their own houses.

The storm which had so vexed them, and wetted them to the skin, like all other things in this world, had its bright side, too, for it had driven in the cattle towards the protecting dwellings of man, instead of wandering about the woods in all directions, as they otherwise would have been. Cows and horses stood in peaceful agreement, side by side, and licked the salt which a little fair-haired boy strewed for them, upon troughs hollowed out and fixed for the purpose, with an eagerness and enjoyment which told distinctly enough how long they had been deprived of it, and how fond they were of it. A small flock of sheep, with their leader, a stately ram, also approached, but the protector of the cows, a stout, broad-shouldered bull, did not seem particularly to relish his company, and lowered his sinewy neck towards him, and pawed the ground threateningly with his foot. The ram, on the other hand, who did not like to be looked upon as a coward before all his dames, and to forfeit the respect which he considered his due, also assumed a hostile attitude, bent down his head, and ran full tilt, carrying the war into the enemy's territory, at his hundred-fold superior adversary, so that the latter was quite taken aback, and merely awaited the attack with horns pointed down.

But the ram was too wide awake to let himself into a quarrel where he undoubtedly must come off second best, and therefore, when he found himself close before the bull, he turned suddenly off to the right, bringing a couple of cows between himself and his antagonist, called his own little flock together by a peculiar bleat, and in the next moment was on his way to the woods with it; so that the deluded bull, when at last, he threw up his powerful head in defiance, to see what had become of the threatened attack, saw no enemy in his vicinity, and could only express his contempt by a loud, hollow bellow, and by a little sand which he scraped up and threw in the eyes of a couple of cows.