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

by S. H. Hammond

We launched our boats upon the lake and rowed to the head of Long Island, where we put up our tents for the night. I have spoken so often of the loveliness of the evenings on these beautiful lakes, that to attempt a description of the one we enjoyed on this romantic island, would be only a tiresome repetition. But there was a splendor about the heavens above, and their counterpart in the depths below, which I have scarcely ever seen equalled. There was no moon in the early evening, and so pure and clear was the atmosphere, so moveless and still the waters, that the stars seemed to come out in vaster numbers, and with an intenser glow, and to be reflected back from away down in the lake with a brighter refulgence; the hills along the shore seemed to stand up in bolder outline; the bays to lay in deeper shadow; while the tall peaks stood in grim solemnity, like pillars supporting the mighty arches of the sky.

"I was asking myself," said Smith, as we sat looking out over the water, in the evening, or gazing down into the glowing depths, and listening to the night voices, faint and far off in the old forests, as they came floating over the lake, "I was asking myself, as we journeyed around the falls to-day, and as we stood on the rock where the river comes leaping down and plunging into the lake, whether the march of improvement would ever spread a Lowell around those falls, or subject those wild waters to the uses of civilization. Whether progress would ever invade those mountain regions; or the ingenuity of man ever discover uses for these rocks and boulders, or coin wealth from the sterile and sandy soil of this old wilderness? Hitherto a country like this has been regarded of no value, save for the timber which it grows; and when that is exhausted, as fit only to be abandoned to sterility and desolation. But who can tell whether there may not be in these boulders, these rocks, this sandy and unproductive soil, unknown wealth, held in reserve to reward the researches of science in its utilitarian explorations. I am not now speaking of gold, or silver, or any other dross, which men have hitherto wasted their toil to accumulate; but of new discoveries, and new purposes to which these now useless things may be applied; discoveries which may send the tide of emigration surging up from the valleys to mountain regions like these. May it not be that science, while delving among the wrecks of vanished ages, may stumble upon some new principle, or combination of the elements of which these old rocks are composed, that shall give them a value beyond that of the richest lowlands, and make them the centre of a dense and cultivated population?"

"Your question," answered Spalding, "is suggestive. Did you ever think what gigantic strides the world has made within the memory of men now living, and who are yet unwilling to be counted as old? Look back for only fifty years, and note what a stupendous leap it has taken! Where then were the iron roads over which the locomotive goes thundering on its mission of civilization? where the telegraph, that mocks at time and annihilates space? Hark! there is a new sound breaking the stillness of midnight, and startling the mountain echoes from their sleep of ages! It is the scream of the steam-whistle, the snort of the iron horse, the thunder of his hoofs of steel, rushing forward with the speed of the wind, shaking the ground like an earthquake as he moves. A new motor has been harnessed into the service of man, and made to fly with his messages swifter than sound? It is the winged lightning; and as it flashes along the wires stretched from city to city, and across continents, carries with unerring certainty every word committed to its charge. Ocean steamers have made but a ferriage of seas. The photographic art has made even the light of the sun a substitute for the pencil of the artist. Everywhere, in all the departments of science, in every branch of the arts, improvement, progress, has been going on with a sublimity of achievement unknown in any age of the past. These things are mighty motors which push along civilization, throwing a wonderful energy into the forward impulse of the world. But remember, that though these results are brought about by the advance in the mechanic arts, yet that advance is based upon a deeper philosophy, a profounder wisdom, than mere perfectability in those arts. Take the steam-engine—it is a great contrivance, a wonderful invention; but the greatest of all was the discovery of the principle and operation, the practical phenomena of steam itself. The telegraphic machine was a great invention; but the great thing was the development of the science of electricity, the discovery of the secret agency which sent forward the thought entrusted to it swifter than light. The daguerrian instruments, the metallic plates, the prepared paper, were great inventions; but vastly greater was the discovery and development of the phenomena and affinities of light, the mystery of solar influences.

"There is hope for the world in all this mighty progress, for with it will one day come the development of the true nature and theory of government, the true solution of the great theory of the social compact, the proper adjustment of the relations of man to man, a right appreciation of the nature and value of human rights. It is bringing forward the masses, elevating the millions who work. It will rouse into activity their innate energies, and bring forth their inward might. It creates THOUGHT to guide the hands that set all this vast machinery in motion. It diffuses and strengthens intellectuality, and the pride of intellectuality, making of the men who work something more than mere machines themselves. It is developing and perfecting a mightier engine than any of man's invention; one that tyrants cannot always control, that kings cannot always manage. That engine is the human mind. Like the steam-engine, it is gathering power, and capability for the exercise of power, and the time will come when it will go crashing, with resistless energy, among thrones, overturning despotisms, upheaving dynasties, sweeping away those false theories of governmental institutions, which guarantee to one class of people a life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and ennoble the destiny of the masses of the people who work.

"But where is this career of progress to end? Is there a limit to this onward movement? We know that the world has made greater advancement in the present century, than it did in the five thousand years preceding it, and that new discoveries in the sciences and the arts are being made every day. Nature has been compelled, and is still being compelled, to yield up secrets which have been for centuries regarded as beyond the power of human capacity to penetrate. How is this? Is the world to go on thus, always? Is this rush of progress to remain unchecked, always? If so, what mystery, even of Omnipotent wisdom, will remain unsolved at last? What results will not human energy be able to accomplish? Is the time to come when man shall be able to shape out of clay, fashion from wood, or stone, an image of himself, and, breathing upon it, command it to walk forth a thing of life, and be obeyed? Will he be able to search out a universal antidote to disease? Will he discover the means of supplying the human frame with such recuperative power as will nullify the law that prescribes to all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness and of death? Will he search out some secret agency which will hold his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the attritions of age, and the ravages of disease? Will he discover how it is that time saps the strength, and steals away the vigor of the human system, and a remedy for exhausted and wasted energies? It is not my purpose to advance a theory based upon an affirmative answer to these inquiries, but when we contemplate the stupendous pace at which the world is moving forward, who will venture to assert where the limit to this progress is to be found? You tell me that man cannot create; that he can only combine into new shapes elements which God has furnished to his hands. I do not know this. That he has not created I admit; but that he has not capabilities, as yet undeveloped, as a creator, I do not KNOW. I will not venture the assertion that the time will ever come when he will have discovered wherein lies the mystery of life; that he will ever find an antidote to disease; that he will search out some recuperative agency stronger than the law of decay, and that will hold the human system in the perpetual vigor, and bloom, and beauty of maturity. I will not assert that science will, at last, be carried to such perfection, that there shall be no more infirmities of age; that the pestilence will be stayed from walking in the darkness, and destruction from wasting at noonday; that men will cease to grow old, save in years, or that death will be compelled to seek its victims only through the channel of accidents, against which forecast will not, and science has no opportunity to guard. What I mean to say is, that I do not KNOW that just such results are beyond the capabilities of human progress. Measuring the future by the past, I cannot demonstrate that such results may not one day be attained."

"The good time of which you speak," said the Doctor, "when there shall be no more infirmity of age, no growing old, save in years; when there shall be no wasting by disease, through the perfectability of the curative science, or the discovery of some recuperative agency, stronger than the law of decay, will never come. When it is granted, as an abstract proposition, that the capabilities of science are sufficient to counteract the mere wasting influence of time upon the human system, you are met by a great practical fact which will overturn your theory. The excesses of the world are a much more fruitful source of disease and death than the attritions of age. There is a constant struggle on the part of nature to build up and beautify, to strengthen and recuperate, against the results of human excesses. Not one in a million of those who pass away every year, die from the effects of age, as a primary cause. Hence, you must not only perfect science, but you must perfect the morals and the habits of the human family, before you can exempt them from decay and death. The instincts of men, the appetencies which they possess in common with the whole animal creation, are each made the source of disease, and premature decay. Some men eat too much; some drink too much; some sleep too much; some waste their vital energies in sensual indulgence, while all have some vicious habit (I mean with reference to the preservation of life), known or unknown to the world, which, sooner or later, undermines the constitution, and helps on the work of dilapidation. These excesses will always exist; they are inherent in the human constitution, resulting from the very nature of man; they are an inevitable sequence of his physical structure, and his intellectual life. To avoid them implies absolute perfectability in every attribute, and that makes him a god. Until man shall have become infinite in wisdom, as well as immaculate in purity, he will continue to indulge, to a greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and those excesses will always be an overmatch, when superadded to the natural law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of science. You must create a radical reform in every department of life; in business, in social habits, in the fashions, in the mode of living, in everything, before you can hope to reach the Utopia of which you speak. The outrages perpetrated upon nature by the conventionalities of the world alone, would be an insurmountable barrier to the realization of your idea. The necessity for excessive labor to satisfy artificial wants hews away at one end of society, and the indulgence of idleness and ease, at the other. Exposure to the elements, to heat and cold, buries its millions; and too great seclusion, in pursuit of comfort in heated rooms, and a confined and corrupted atmosphere, buries its millions also. Lack of wholesome food fills thousands of graves, and the results of abundance fill other thousands. Lack of appropriate clothing, fitted for the constitution and the seasons, engenders disease and death; and an excess of the same article, fashioned as stupendous folly only can fashion it, engenders vastly more disease and death. There are elements of decay and death furnished to men and women, tempting their weakness, and forced upon their adoption by the conventionalities of life, every day, every hour, and everywhere. It is a part of our civilization, an offshoot of the very progress of which you speak, a sort of necessity in practical results, at least, that men shall so live as to wage war against nature, and against themselves; that they shall hurry themselves, or be hurried by inevitable circumstances, into the grave at the earliest possible moment. You may, therefore, dismiss from your mind, my friend, the fanciful idea, that science will ever enable the world to dispense with the cemeteries, or that the cities of the dead will, through its agency, cease to flourish. You will find that as science closes up one avenue to the grave, men will force a way to it through another. We shall have to live as our fathers lived, be subject to disease as they were, grow old as they grew old, and die as they died. We must submit to the law which has written the doom of decay upon all things, which has made us mortal, and when our time comes we must be content to pass away as the countless millions who preceded us have done."

"Well," said Spalding, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and rose to retire, under the cover of the tent, for the night, "be it as you say, what matters it? 'I would not live always.' Give to us the hope of an hereafter, a faith that looks through the valley of the shadow of death, and sees immortality, a world of glory beyond, and what matters it how soon the hour of our departure shall come?"

CHAPTER XXIX.

A MYSTERIOUS SOUND—TREED BY A MOOSE—ANGLING FOR A POWDER HORN—AN UNHEEDED WARNING AND THE CONSEQUENCES.

As Spalding ceased speaking, there came from away off, over the forest in the direction of the tall mountain peaks, a faint sound like the boom of a cannon, so distant that it could scarcely be heard, and yet it was distinct and palpable to the senses. I say that it came from the direction of the mountains, seen dim and shadowy in the distance, and yet none of us were quite sure of this. We all heard it, but not one of us could assert that the direction from which it came was a fixed fact in his mind.