A Hermit's Wild Friends; or, Eighteen Years in the Woods

by Mason Augustus Walton

Until the middle of November the weather continued mild and balmy, with but a few stormy days. I recall, with pleasure and satisfaction, the evenings passed at the Eyrie. Perched on the brow of the cliff, I studied the city by moonlight, lamplight, and gas-light. On dark nights the lights of the city took on the shape of a huge monster, half-coiled, and extended from Riverdale to Eastern Point Light. The latter is a revolving red light, and it gave the semblance of life to the one-eyed monster which constantly blinked its great red eye. It pleased me to call this imaginary monster the sea-serpent. Gloucester owes her growth to the sea, and she might well take on the shape of the sea-serpent.

When the danger-signals were up, the Outer Harbor was crowded with craft of all kinds. At night time the tossing lights on the vessels contrasted strangely with the fixed lights on shore.

The twin lights on Thatcher's Island could be seen from the Eyrie, and I often wondered if these lights were necessary. To the middle of November I had seen the sea only in comparatively fair weather, when it was on its good behavior. Afterward a storm that wrecked my tent, and brought in its wake huge waves that thundered against the headlands of Cape Ann, caused me to wonder in another direction. It seems incredible, but it is a fact, that I could feel the solid rock tremble beneath my tent from the shock of wave against headland, one fourth of a mile distant.

The storm died out, but it left an impression on my mind that caused me to look for a locality less exposed to the wind. I found an ideal spot on the "Old Salem Road." The spot was surrounded by wooded hills, where a little brook crept out of a swamp and crossed to the south side of the old highway. After crossing the highway, the waters of the brook went tumbling and singing down to another swamp, where they were lost in a tangle of moss, ferns, and marsh-marigolds.

The Old Salem Road had been deserted more than one hundred years, save as a wood road in winter. At one time it was the connecting link between Salem and Gloucester. Seven ruined cellars indicate the spots where dwelling-houses once stood.

I moved my tent from the Eyrie, and put it up within the limits of the old highway, and begun to build a little log cabin in which to spend the winter.

While in the tent I experienced zero weather, and it may be of interest to know how I managed to keep warm. I had picked up two discarded milk-cans, and these I filled with hard wood coals from a fire which I maintained near the tent. By closing the flaps of the tent the heat from the cans would keep up an even temperature through the night. If it happened to get cold toward morning I would burn a newspaper now and then, which would warm the tent until light enough to start an outdoor fire. I baked beans in a hole in the ground, in true Maine camp style. There would be coals enough under the bean-pot, in the morning, to cook coffee, and hot coffee and baked beans seemed to go to the right spot when the thermometer was hanging around zero, and one was living in a cotton tent.

I did my cooking on a bed of red hot coals, thus avoiding smoked food and the loss of coffee-pot handle or spout. Hemlock bark from a dead tree will give the best coals in the shortest time.

By the middle of December I had moved into my log cabin. I put in a second-hand range, which proved to be an excellent baker and warmed the cabin in the coldest weather. The remainder of the winter "I was as snug as a bug in a rug," to use an old familiar adage.

Before the winter months had passed, chickadees, black snow-birds, and tree-sparrows found their way into the cabin dooryard. I fed lard to the chickadees on a chip, and the birds would eat this clear fat, at short intervals, all day, and come around the next morning none the worse for the strange diet. Certainly such food would kill any other bird. The snow-birds and sparrows were fed on different kinds of bird-seed. When I mention sparrows I do not refer to the English sparrow. I am pleased to state that this undesirable alien does not come to my dooryard. The tree-sparrow is a native bird, and here on the Cape, is seen only in winter. It comes to us in October, and leaves by the first of April. The tree-sparrow is an interesting bird to know. It comes to us in the winter when the most of our birds are in the South. It is a handsome bird from a sparrow standpoint.