Bright and early on the morning after my arrival, Friend B. was at my door; and after a savory, if hasty breakfast, we sounded boute-selle. Outside the gate a couple of forest-ponies were waiting,—stout, lively, five-year-olds, equal, if not to a two-forty heat, yet to twenty miles of steady trot without distress,—brown and sleek as you please, with the knowingest eyes, and intelligence expressed in the impatient stamp of the fore-foot, and good-humor in the twitching of the ear. Into the saddle and off, with the cheery breeze to bathe us in exhilaration, as it went humming around us laden with aromatic odors and mysterious whisperings of the pine-trees to the sea,—through the dew-diamonded grass of the little lawn at the top of the hill,—past the great elm with its glistening foliage, and its carolling crew of just-awakened birds,—then a canter down the sandy slope to the edge of the forest, and again the pines are around us.
Before us lay a four-mile ride over a devious track among trees which my companion knows by heart. Paths diverge into the forest on either side, running north and south, east and west, straight and crooked, narrow and broad; but B. follows unerringly the right, though undistinguished trail. This knowledge of woodcraft,—how it appalls and wonder-strikes the unlearned metropolitan, accustomed as he is to numbered houses and name-boarded streets! No omnibus-driver threading the confusion of a great thoroughfare could shape his course with greater assurance and lack of hesitation than does B. through these endless avenues of heavy-foliaged pines, broken only now and then by some tangled, impenetrable brake of cedars, or by a charred and blackened clearing, where the coaler has been at work. I gradually grew to believe that he could call every tree by its name, as generals have been said to know every soldier in their armies.
At length we reached a clearing of one or two acres in extent, the site of Cranberry Lodge, and the terminus of our ride. In the centre of the lone expanse two unusually tall pines were left standing, at the base of which a curious structure nestled, which had been for several weeks the occasional hermitage of my companion. It was built entirely with his own hands, of cedar rails and white-pine planks, which he had cut and sawed from trees that his own hands had felled. A queer little cabin, some nine feet in length by five or six in breadth, standing all alone in the forest, with not a neighbor within a distance of at least four miles!
Dismounting, we fastened our horses to a couple of saplings, and I was introduced to the interior of Cranberry Lodge, which was tenanted only by the "hired man," who, in the absence of Mr. B., reigned supreme in the clearing. The dwelling I found no less primitive in internal than in its external appearance. Three persons, moderately doubled up and squeezed, could find room in the interior, which was furnished with a bench for the safe-keeping of sundry pots, pans, and other culinary necessaries, and with a shelf on which some blankets were laid, constituting my companion's bedstead and bed, when he slept in Cranberry Lodge. Beneath the "bunk" a small hole scooped in the sand stood in lieu of a cellar, and contained a stock of provisions of Mr. B.'s own cooking.
Such a backwoodish dwelling as Cranberry Lodge, existing in the year 1858, within seventy miles of New York, requires some explanation. Its foundation is—pies! Cape Cod, the great emporium of the cranberry-trade, has been running short for the last few years; in other words, its supply is unequal to the demand. The heavy Britishers have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way; and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now. It so happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,—grew red and purple and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well as when Washington passed through the Pines,—and for sixty or seventy years have furnished a certain class of gypsies—of whom more anon—with merchandise which sold well in the neighboring villages and cities. No one thought of cultivating cranberries; no one, but the gypsies aforesaid, of gathering them for sale. But it came to pass that a certain farmer of Hanover was, like many another, unsuccessful during several years. As a last resource, he purchased of the owner of the Big House a cranberry-bog,—that is to say, one of the many marshy spots which are interspersed in the forest,—for which he paid five dollars the acre. There were a little more than one hundred acres in the bog. At a cost of some six hundred dollars Mr. F. fenced in his bog, and spent three months in watching the cranberries as they ripened, to protect them from depredation. To his intense astonishment, he found, in October, that the yield was between two and three hundred bushels to the acre, and that his land and fencing were paid for, with a balance left over for next year. In consequence of this success, a little mania for cranberry-farming seized upon the denizens of the Pines, and bogs acquired a value they had never borne before. This was in 1857. Early in 1858, one of these plots of land, with an adjoining piece of forest, was rented by Mr. B., who, like a right-down Yankee, determined to cultivate it himself. So, with the aid of one hired man, a clearing was made in his forest-patch, a hut built, four miles from the nearest habitation, and the trees cut down were converted into rails, wherewith to fence in the cranberry-land. At the time of my visit, the crop was just beginning to think of getting ripe, and the great lazy vines, each one creeping for several feet along the ground, were severally loaded with dozens of delicately-tinted berries, plump and fair as British beauties, which silently drew to themselves and absorbed the rays of the sun, turning them to color and succulent subacidulousness. A most glorious sight that same hundred-acre bog must have been a couple of weeks later, when the berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to the waning sun! Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for cranberries,—the yield was only sufficient to pay for the land and fencing, with a modicum over to begin 1859 with!
So cranberries grew to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—the Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not yet had its Agassiz nor its Wyman,—yet there it flourishes and repeats itself!
My friend, Mr. B., considerately undertook to initiate me into some of the mysteries of this race, which has proved minatory, though not destructive, to his blushing crop,—and accordingly led me through brake and brier, past wild and gloomy cedar-swamps, over brooks insecurely bridged with fallen logs, or, perchance, with stepping-blocks of pine-stumps, far into the silent forest, and to a little dell or dingle,—a natural clearing,—where a couple of tents were pitched, and the smoke of a struggling fire told infallibly of human neighborhood. The barking of a splenetic little terrier brought from one of the tents a man of some fifty years, lank and gaunt of visage, with matted hair, and wild, uncivilized eyes, dressed in a ragged jacket and what had once been a pair of trousers. His face wore no expression of intelligence; but a look of intense, though animal cunning lurked in his eyes. While I was gazing on this individual, who stood in silence by his tent, there emerged from the other an ancient female, who might have been eighty years of age, but who hobbled towards us with much briskness.
"Good evening, Hannah Butler," said Mr. B.; "I've brought you some tomatoes from the Big House. This is my friend, Mr. Smith of York."
Mr. Smith of York (grimly repressing a smile, as his mischievous memory whispered something about Brooks of Sheffield) bowed gravely to Mrs. Butler. Mr. B. whispers,—"That's the Queen of the Pine Rats!" Hannah meanwhile mumbles over one of the fleshy tomatoes.
The man whom we had first seen held in his hand a tattered shawl, with which he now began patching a portion of his tent, saying at the same time that there was a storm a-brewing.