Part 12

Near camp stood a tall, ragged yellow birch, its partially cast-off bark hanging in crisp sheets or dense rolls.

"That tree needs the barber," we said, "and shall have a call from him to-night."

So after dark I touched a match into it, and we saw the flames creep up and wax in fury until the whole tree and its main branches stood wrapped in a sheet of roaring flame. It was a wild and striking spectacle, and must have advertised our camp to every nocturnal creature in the forest.

What does the camper think about when lounging around the fire at night? Not much,--of the sport of the day, of the big fish he lost and might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's plans. An owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that huge background of the night. Unless he is an old camper-out, there will be an undercurrent of dread or half fear. My companion said he could not help but feel all the time that there ought to be a sentinel out there pacing up and down. One seems to require less sleep in the woods, as if the ground and the untempered air rested and refreshed him sooner. The balsam and the hemlock heal his aches very quickly. If one is awakened often during the night, as he invariably is, he does not feel that sediment of sleep in his mind next day that he does when the same interruption occurs at home; the boughs have drawn it all out of him.

And it is wonderful how rarely any of the housed and tender white man's colds or influenzas come through these open doors and windows of the woods. It is our partial isolation from Nature that is dangerous; throw yourself unreservedly upon her and she rarely betrays you.

If one takes anything to the woods to read, he seldom reads it; it does not taste good with such primitive air.

There are very few camp poems that I know of, poems that would be at home with one on such an expedition; there is plenty that is weird and spectral, as in Poe, but little that is woody and wild as this scene is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C. D. Shanly--the only one, I believe, the author ever wrote--that fits well the distended pupil of the mind's eye about the camp-fire at night. It was printed many years ago in the "Atlantic Monthly," and is called "The Walker of the Snow;" it begins thus:--

"'Speed on, speed on, good master; The camp lies far away; We must cross the haunted valley Before the close of day.'"

"That has a Canadian sound," said Aaron; "give us more of it."

"'How the snow-blight came upon me I will tell you as we go,-- The blight of the shadow hunter Who walks the midnight snow.'

And so on. The intent seems to be to personify the fearful cold that overtakes and benumbs the traveler in the great Canadian forests in winter. This stanza brings out the silence or desolation of the scene very effectively,--a scene without sound or motion:--

"'Save the wailing of the moose-bird With a plaintive note and low; And the skating of the red leaf Upon the frozen snow.'

"The rest of the poem runs thus:--

"'And said I, Though dark is falling, And far the camp must be, Yet my heart it would be lightsome If I had but company.

"'And then I sang and shouted, Keeping measure as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As it sprang beneath my tread.

"'Nor far into the valley Had I dipped upon my way, When a dusky figure joined me In a capuchin of gray,

"'Bending upon the snow-shoes With a long and limber stride; And I hailed the dusky stranger, As we traveled side by side.

"'But no token of communion Gave he by word or look, And the fear-chill fell upon me At the crossing of the brook.

"'For I saw by the sickly moonlight, As I followed, bending low, That the walking of the stranger Left no foot-marks on the snow.

"'Then the fear-chill gathered o'er me, Like a shroud around me cast, As I sank upon the snow-drift Where the shadow hunter passed.

"'And the otter-trappers found me, Before the break of day, With my dark hair blanched and whitened As the snow in which I lay.

"'But they spoke not as they raised me; For they knew that in the night I had seen the shadow hunter And had withered in his sight.

"'Sancta Maria speed us! The sun is fallen low: Before us lies the valley Of the Walker of the Snow!'"

"Ah!" exclaimed my companion. "Let us pile on more of those dry birch-logs; I feel both the 'fear-chill' and the 'cold-chill' creeping over me. How far is it to the valley of the Neversink?"

"About three or four hours' march, the man said."

"I hope we have no haunted valleys to cross?"

"None," said I, "but we pass an old log cabin about which there hangs a ghostly superstition. At a certain hour in the night, during the time the bark is loose on the hemlock, a female form is said to steal from it and grope its way into the wilderness. The tradition runs that her lover, who was a bark-peeler and wielded the spud, was killed by his rival, who felled a tree upon him while they were at work. The girl, who helped her mother cook for the 'hands,' was crazed by the shock, and that night stole forth into the woods and was never seen or heard of more. There are old hunters who aver that her cry may still be heard at night at the head of the valley whenever a tree falls in the stillness of the forest."

"Well, I heard a tree fall not ten minutes ago," said Aaron; "a distant, rushing sound with a subdued crash at the end of it, and the only answering cry I heard was the shrill voice of the screech owl off yonder against the mountain. But maybe it was not an owl," said he after a moment; "let us help the legend along by believing it was the voice of the lost maiden."