“Thanks thanks!” said I, grasping the hunter’s hand in the warmth of my gratitude. “I accept your invitation.”
“This way, then, stranger!”
We struck into a path that led to the right; and, after riding about two miles further, arrived at the solitary home of the hunter—a log-cabin surrounded by a clearing. I soon found he was its sole occupant—as he was its owner—some half-dozen large dogs being the only living creatures that were present to bid us welcome. A rude horse-shed was at hand—a “loose box,” it might be termed, as it was only intended to accommodate one—and this was placed at the disposal of my Arab. The “critter” of my host had, for that night, to take to the woods, and choose his stall among the trees—but to that sort of treatment he had been well inured. A close-chinked cabin for a lodging; a bear-skin for a bed; cold venison, corn-bread, and coffee for supper; with a pipe to follow: all these, garnished with the cheer of a hearty welcome, constitute an entertainment not to be despised by an old campaigner; and such was the treatment I met with, under the hospitable clapboard roof of the young backwoodsman—Frank Wingrove.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Indian Summer.
Look forth on the forest ere autumn wind scatters
Its frondage of scarlet, and purple, and gold:
That forest, through which the great “Father of Waters”
For thousands of years his broad current has rolled!
Gaze over that forest of opaline hue,
With a heaven above it of glorious blue,
And say is there scene, in this beautiful world,
Where Nature more gaily her flag has unfurled?
Or think’st thou, that e’en in the regions of bliss,
There’s a landscape more truly Elysian than this?
Behold the dark sumac in crimson arrayed,
Whose veins with the deadliest poison are rife!
And, side by her side, on the edge of the glade,
The sassafras laurel, restorer of life!
Behold the tall maples turned red in their hue,
And the muscadine vine, with its clusters of blue;
And the lotus, whose leaves have scarce time to unfold,
Ere they drop, to discover its berries of gold;
And the bay-tree, perfumed, never changing its sheen,
And for ever enrobed in its mantle of green!
And list to the music borne over the trees!
It falls on the ear, giving pleasure ecstatic—
The song of the birds and the hum of the bees
Commingling their tones with the ripples erratic.
Hark! hear you the red-crested cardinal’s call
From the groves of annona? - from tulip-tree tall
The mock-bird responding? - below, in the glade,
The dove softly cooing in mellower shade—
While the oriole answers in accents of mirth?
Oh, where is there melody sweeter on earth?
In infamy now the bold slanderer slumbers,
Who falsely declared ’twas a land without song!
Had he listened, as I, to those musical numbers
That liven its woods through the summer-day long—
Had he slept in the shade of its blossoming trees,
Or inhaled their sweet balm ever loading the breeze,
He would scarcely have ventured on statement so wrong—
“Her plants without perfume, her birds without song.”
Ah! closet-philosopher, sure, in that hour,
You had never beheld the magnolia’s flower?
Surely here the Hesperian gardens were found—
For how could such land to the gods be unknown?
And where is there spot upon African ground
So like to a garden a goddess would own?
And the dragon so carelessly guarding the tree,
Which the hero, whose guide was a god of the sea,
Destroyed before plucking the apples of gold—
Was nought but that monster - the mammoth of old.
If earth ever owned spot so divinely caressed,
Sure that region of eld was the Land of the West!
The memory of that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont—not in the famed valleys of Alp and Apennine—not by the romantic borders of the Rhine, but upon the banks of Mud Creek in the state of Tennessee! In truth, it was a lovely landscape, or rather a succession of landscapes, through which I rode, after leaving the cabin of my hospitable host. It was the season of “Indian summer”—that singular phenomenon of the occidental clime, when the sun, as if rueing his southern declension, appears to return along the line of the zodiac. He loves better the “Virgin” than “Aquarius;” and lingering to take a fond look on that fair land he has fertilised by his beams, dispels for a time his intruding antagonist, the hoary Boreas. But his last kiss kills: there is too much passion in his parting glance. The forest is fired by its fervour; and many of its fairest forms the rival trod of the north may never clasp in his cold embrace. In suttee-like devotion, they scorn to shun the flame; but, with outstretched arms inviting it; offer themselves as a holocaust to him who, through the long summer-day, has smiled upon their trembling existence.
At this season of the year, too, the virgin forest is often the victim of another despoiler—the hurricane. Sweeping them with spiteful breath, this rude destroyer strikes down the trees like fragile reeds—prostrating at once the noblest and humblest forms. Not one is left standing on the soil: for the clearing of the hurricane is a complete work; and neither stalk, sapling, nor stump may be seen, where it has passed. Even the giants of the forest yield to its strength, as though smitten by the hand of a destroying angel! Uprooted, they lie along the earth side by side—the soil still clinging to the clavicles of their roots, and their leafy tops turned to the lee—in this prostrate alignment slowly to wither and decay! A forest, thus fallen, presents for a time a picture of melancholy aspect. It suggests the idea of some grand battle-field, where the serried hosts, by a terrible discharge of “grape and canister,” have been struck down on the instant: not one being left to look to the bodies of the slain—neither to bury nor remove them. Like the battle-field, too, it becomes the haunt of wolves and other wild beasts; who find among the fallen trunks, if not food, a fastness securing them from the pursuit both of hound and hunter. Here in hollow log the black she-bear gives birth to her loutish cubs, training them to climb over the decaying trunks; here the lynx and red couguar choose their cunning convert; here the racoon rambles over his beaten track; the sly opossum crawls warily along the log, or goes to sleep among the tangle of dry rhizomes; while the gaunt brown wolf may be often heard howling amidst the ruin, or in hoarse bark baying the midnight moon.