Wild Northern Scenes; Or, Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod

by S. H. Hammond

A DEER TRAPPED—THE RESULT OF A COMBAT—A QUESTION OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY DISCUSSED.

We returned the next day to our camping ground. On the "Lower Chain of Ponds," we found our pioneer and his goods all safe, no visitors having passed that way in our absence. Smith knocked over a deer on our passage down. I have said that just above our camp was a dam. It was made in this wise: first, great logs were laid up, across the stream, in the same fashion as the side of a log house, to the height of about twelve feet, properly secured, and upon these, other and smaller logs were laid, side by side, transversely, and sloping up the stream at an angle of forty-five degrees, like one side of the roof of a house. These long, slender logs, reached out over and beyond those that were laid up across the stream, the lower part covered with brush, and then with earth, so as to make a tight dam, the upper ends, even when the dam was full, extending several feet above the top water line. These logs, or perhaps they had better be called large and long poles, for, when compared with the foundation timbers, they were nothing more, have, of course, above where they are covered with brush and earth, interstices, or crevices, between them.

On our return, and as we came in sight of the dam, I, being in the forward boat, saw a small deer, laying stretched out upon these poles, dead, hanging, as it were, by one foot. My impression was, that it had been shot, and dragged up there, and left by our pioneer for the present. We found, however, upon examination, that the deer had walked up on the dam, probably to take a look at what was below, and on the other side, when his foot slipped down between the poles, and he was caught as in a trap. His leg was badly broken, and nearly severed by his efforts to get loose, and the bark of the poles was worn away within reach of his struggles. He had died where he thus got hung; and there he was, stone dead, but not yet cold, when we found him. He was a fine, fat, young deer, and died by one of the thousand accidents to which the wild animals of the forest, as well as man, are exposed.

Upon relating this incident to an old hunter, I was told by him that he once, while out in the woods, came upon the skeletons of two large bucks, that, in fighting, had got their horns so interlocked and wedged together, that they could not separate them, and thus, locked in the death grapple, they had starved and died. There lay their bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and, bleached by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them yet at home, fast together, as he found them, as one of the curiosities to be met with in the Rackett woods.

"I've been thinking," said Spalding, in his quiet way, as we sat towards evening, looking out over the pleasant little lake, watching the shadow chasing the retiring sunlight up the sides of the opposite hills, "I've been thinking how differently we act, and feel, and talk—aye, and think, too—out here in these old woods, from what we do when at home and surrounded by civilization. However we four may deny being old, we cannot certainly claim to be young. We have all reached the meridian of life, and though feeling few, if any, of the infirmities of age, still, our next move will be in the downhill direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we talk and act, and think, and feel, too, like boys. I do not speak this reproachfully, but as a fact which develops a curious attribute of the human mind."

"Well," replied the Doctor, "while it may be curious, it is exceedingly natural. We have thrown off the restraints which society imposes upon us; we have thrown off the cares which the business of life heaps upon us. We have gone back for a season to the freedom, the sports, the sights, the exercises which delighted our boyhood. And can it be called strange that the feelings, the thoughts, and emotions of our youth should come welling up from the long past, or that with the return of boyish emotions, the language and actions of boyhood should be indulged in again?"

"You will find," said Smith, "your old feelings of sobriety, of thoughtfulness, your cautiousness, coming back just in proportion as you tire of this wilderness life, and that by the time you are ready to return to civilization, you will have become as staid, sober, and reflective men of the world, as when you started, with as strict a guard upon your expression of sentiment, or opinion, as ever."

"It is that 'guard' of which you speak," remarked Spalding, "over the emotions, the sentiments of the heart, stifling their expression, and chaining down under a placid exterior their manifestations, that constitutes one of the broad distinctions between youth and manhood. It is when that guard is set, that the process of fossilization, so to speak, begins; and if no relaxing agency intervenes, the heart becomes cold and hard, even before white hairs gather upon the head. I often imagine that if men who really think, who have the power of analyzation, of weighing causes and measuring results, would dismiss that rigid espionage over themselves, would stand in less awe of the world, in less dread of its accusation of change, and with the fearless frankness of youth, declare the truth, and stand boldly up for the right as they, at the time, understand it to be, without reference to consistency of present views and opinions with those of the past, the world would be much better off; progress would have vastly fewer obstacles to contend against. But it is not every man, even of those who think, who in politics, in religion, in science, in anything involving a possible charge of inconsistency, of the desertion of a party, a sect, or a principle, dare avow a change of conviction or opinion, however such change may exist. This should not be so. It belittles manhood, and makes slaves and cowards of men. It is a proud prerogative, this ability and power of thinking. It is a priceless privilege, this freedom of thought and opinion, and he is a craven who moves on with the heedless and thoughtless crowd, conscious of error, himself a hypocrite and a living lie, through fear of the charge of 'inconsistency,' the accusation of change. 'Speak your opinions of to-day,' says Carlyle, 'in words hard as rocks, and your opinions of to-morrow in words just as hard, even though your opinions of to-morrow may contradict your opinions of to-day.' There is a fund of true wisdom in this beautiful maxim, if men would appreciate it. It would correct a vast deal of error in politics, in religion, in philosophy, in the social relations of life. Times change, and struggle against it as they may, men's convictions will change with the times. The man who says that his opinions never alter, is to me either a knave or a fool. For a thinking man to remain stationary, when everything else is on the move, is a simple impossibility. Time was when the stage coach was the model method of travelling. It carried us six, sometimes eight miles the hour, in comfort and safety. But who thinks of the lumbering stage coach now, with its snail's pace of eight miles the hour, when the locomotive with its long train of cars, lighted up like the street of a city in motion, rushes over the smooth rails literally with the speed of the wind. The scream of the steam-whistle has succeeded the old stage-horn, and the iron horse taken the place of those of flesh and blood. Change is written in great glowing letters upon everything. It stands out in blazing capitals everywhere. All things are on the move! Forward! and forward! is the word. And who would, who CAN, stand still amidst the universal rush? Only a century ago, from the valley through which the majestic Hudson rolls its everlasting flood, westward to the mighty Mississippi, westward still to the Rocky Mountains, and yet westward to the Pacific, was one vast wilderness; interminable forests, standing in all their primeval grandeur and gloom; boundless prairies, covered with profitless verdure, over which the silence of the everlasting past brooded; and above all these, mountain peaks, covered with perpetual snows, upon which the eye of a white man had never looked, stood piercing the sky. From the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi, that old forest has been swept away. The broad prairies have been, or are being, subjected to the culture of human industry; even the Rocky Mountains have been overleaped, and beyond them is a great State already admitted into the family of the Union, and a territory teeming with an adventurous and hardy population, knocking at its door for admission. The march of civilization has crossed a continent of more than three thousand miles, sweeping away forests, spreading out green fields, planting cities and towns, making the old wilderness to blossom as the rose, scattering life, activity, progress, all along the road it has travelled. The great rivers that rolled in silence through unbroken forests, have become the highways of trade, upon whose bosoms the white sails of commerce are spread, and through whose waters countless steamboats plough their way. These stupendous changes are the results of human energy, and they reach, in their moral prestige, their progressive influence, through every vein and artery of governmental and social compacts, affecting political institutions, shaping national policy, and forcing, by their resistless demonstrations, change and mutations of opinions upon all men.

"As it has been in the past century, so it is now, and so it will be through all the long future. Forward, and forward, is the word, and forward will be the word for centuries to come. And why? Because all men here, in this free Republic, are free to think, free to speak, free to will, free to act. No traditions of the past bind them; no hereditary policy controls their action; no customs, covered with the dust of ages, fetter them; no physical or intellectual gyves, corroded by the rust of centuries, are eating into their flesh. Because thinking American men everywhere live in the present, ignoring and defying the dead past, and building up the mighty future. Because they 'speak their opinions of TO-DAY in words hard as rocks, and their opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the opinions of a quarter of a century, a decade, a year, a month ago, remain unchanged, immutable, fixed as a star always, amidst the new demonstrations looming up like mountains everywhere around us?'

"Man's life is short at best; a little point of time, scarcely discernible on the map of ages; his aspirations, his hopes, his ambition, more transient than the lightning's flash; but his opinions may tell for good upon that little point occupied by his generation, and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The cloud and the storm will pass away, and the brightness and glory of the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak his opinions then of to-day in words hard as rocks, and his opinions of to-morrow in words just as hard.' Let him speak his opinions thus on all subjects within the range of human investigation, upon science, philosophy, politics, religion, morals; and leave to little minds to settle the question of consistency or change. Let his be the eagle's flight towards the sun, and theirs to skim in darkness along the ground, like the course of the mousing owl."