 CHAPTER III Humanity in Oxon Jack the Pony learning to ride, knob and knell, snakes, mosquitoes and their kin, fish and fishing, considering the lilies, learning to swim, a narrow escape from drowning and a victory, accidents to animals. Coming direct from school in Scotland, while we were still hopefully ignorant and far from tame, notwithstanding the unnatural profusion of teaching and thrashing lavished upon us, getting acquainted with the animals about us was a never-failing source of wonder and delight. At first my father, like nearly all the backwood settlers, bought a yoke of oxen to do the farm work, and as field after field was cleared the number was gradually increased until we had five yoke. These wise, patient, plotting animals did all the plowing, logging, hauling, and hard work of every sort for the first four or five years, and never having seen oxen before we looked at them with the same eager freshness of conception as we did at the wild animals. We worked with them, sympathized with them in their rest and toil and play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should have had we been only trained scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox and cow and calf had individual character. Old white-faced buck, one of the second yoke of oxen we owned, was a notably sagacious fellow. He seemed to reason sometimes almost like ourselves. In the fall we fed the cattle lots of pumpkins and had to split them open so that mouthfuls could be readily broken off. But buck never waited for us to come to his help. The others, when they were hungry and impatient, tried to break through the hard brine with their teeth, but seldom with success if the pumpkin was full-grown. Buck never wasted time in this mumbling, slavering way, but crushed them with his head. He went to the pile, picked out a good one, like a boy choosing an orange or apple, rolled it down onto the open ground, deliberately kneeled in front of it, placed his broad, flat brow on top of it, brought his weight hard down and crushed it, then quietly arose and went on with his meal in comfort. Some would call this instinct, as if so-called blind instinct must necessarily make an ox stand on its head to break pumpkins when his teeth got sore, or when nobody came with an axe to split them. Another fine ox showed his skill when hungry by opening all the fences that stood in his way to the cornfields. The humanity we found in them came partly through the expression of their eyes when tired, their tones of voice when hungry and calling for food, their patient plotting and pulling in hot weather, their long, drawn-out, sighing breath when exhausted and suffering like ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest with the same grateful look as ours. We recognized their kinship also by their yawning like ourselves when sleepy and evidently enjoying the same peculiar pleasure at the roots of their jaws by the way they stretched themselves in the morning after a good rest. By learning languages, Scotch, English, Irish, French, Dutch, a smattering of each as required in the faithful service they so willingly, wisely rendered, by their intelligent, alert curiosity manifested in listening to strange sounds, their love of play, the attachments they made, and their mourning long continued when a companion was killed. When we went to Portage, our nearest town, about ten or twelve miles from the farm, it would oftentimes be late before we got back, and in the summertime in sultry, rainy weather the clouds were full of sheet lightning which every minute or two would suddenly illumine the landscape, revealing all its features, the hills and valleys, meadows and trees, about as fully and clearly as the noonday sunshine, then as suddenly the glorious light would be quenched, making the darkness seem denser than before. On such nights the cattle had to find the way home without any help from us, but they never got off the track, for they followed it by scent like dogs. Once father returning late from Portage or Kingston compelled Tom and Jerry, our first oxen, to leave the dim track, imagining they must be going wrong. At last they stopped and refused to go further, then father unhitched them from the wagon, took hold of Tom's tail, and was thus led straight to the shanty. Last morning he set out to seek his wagon and found it on the brow of a steep hill above an impassable swamp. We learned less from the cows, because we did not enter so far into their lives, working with them, suffering heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and almost deadly weariness with them. But none, with natural charity, could fail to sympathize with them in their love for their calves, and to feel that it in no way differed from the divine mother-love of a woman in thoughtful, self-sacrificing care, for they would brave every danger, giving their lives for their offspring. Nor could we fail to sympathize with their awkward, blunt-nose baby calves, with such beautiful, wandering eyes, looking out on the world and slowly getting acquainted with things, all so strange to them, and awkwardly learning to use their legs and play and fight. Before leaving Scotland, father promised us a pony to ride when we got to America, and we saw to it that this promise was not forgotten. Only a week or two after our arrival in the woods, he bought us a little Indian pony for thirteen dollars from a storekeeper in Kingston, who had obtained him from a Winnebago or Menominee Indian in trade for goods. He was a stout handsome bay with long black mane and tail, and though he was only two years old, the Indians had already taught him to carry all sorts of burdens, to stand without being tied, to go anywhere over all sorts of ground fast or slow, and to jump and swim and fear nothing, a truly wonderful creature, strangely different from meshy, skittish, nervous, superstitious civilized beasts. We turned him loose and, strange to say, he never ran away from us or refused to be caught, but behaved as if he had known Scotch boys all his life, probably because we were about as wild as young Indians. One day when father happened to have a little leisure, he said, now barons, run down the meadow and get your pony and learn to ride him. So we let him out to a smooth place near an Indian mound back at the shanty, where father directed us to begin. I mounted for the first memorable lesson, crossed the mound, and set out at a slow walk along the wagon track made in hauling lumber. Then father shouted, Whop him up, John, whop him up, make him gallop. Gallopin is easier and better than walkin or trotin. Jack was willing and away he sped at a good fast gallop. I managed to keep my balance fairly well by holding fast to the main, but could not keep from bumping up and down, for I was plump and elastic and so was Jack, therefore about half of the time I was in the air. After a quarter of a mile or so of this curious transportation I cried, Whoa, Jack! The wonderful creature seemed to understand Scotch, for he stopped so suddenly I flew over his head, but he stood perfectly still as if that flying method of dismounting were the regular way. Jumping on again I bumped and bobbed back along the grassy flowery track. Over the Indian mound cried, Whoa, Jack! flew over his head and alighted in father's arms as gracefully as if it were all intended for circus work. After going over the course five or six times in the same free picturesque style I gave place to Brother David, whose performances were much like my own. In a few weeks, however, or a month we were taking adventurous rides more than a mile long out to a big meadow frequented by Sandhill Cranes and returning safely with wonderful stories of the great long-legged birds we had seen and how on the whole journey away and back we had fallen off only five or six times. Gradually we learned to gallop through the woods without roads of any sort, bareback and without rope or bridle, guiding only by leaning from side to side or by slight knee pressure. In this free way we used to amuse ourselves, riding at full speed across a big kettle that was on our farm without holding on by either mane or tail. These so-called kettles were formed by the melting of large, detached blocks of ice that had been buried in moraine material thousands of years ago when the ice sheet that covered all this region was receding. As the buried ice melted, of course the moraine material above and about it fell in, forming hopper-shaped hollows, while the grass growing on their sides and around them prevented the rain and wind from filling them up. The one we performed in was perhaps seventy or eighty feet wide and twenty or thirty feet deep, and without a saddle or hold of any kind it was not easy to keep from slipping over Jack's head in diving into it or over his tail climbing out. This was fine sport on the long summer Sundays when we were able to steal away before meeting time without being seen. We got very warm and red at it, and oftentimes poor Jack, dripping with sweat like his riders, seemed to have been boiled in that kettle. In Scotland we had often been admonished to be bold, and this advice we passed on to Jack, who had already got many a wild lesson from Indian boys. Once, when teaching him to jump muddy streams, I made him try the creek in our meadow at a place where it is about twelve feet wide. He jumped bravely enough, but came down with a grand splash hardly more than half way over. The water was only about a foot in depth, but the black vegetable mud half a float was unfathomable. I managed to wallow ashore, but poor Jack sank deeper and deeper until only his head was visible in the black abyss, and his Indian fortitude was desperately tried. His foundering so suddenly in the treacherous gulf recalled the story of the Abbot of Aberberthawks Bell, which went down with a gurgling sound while bubbles rose and burst around. I had to go to Father for help. He tied a long hemp rope brought from Scotland around Jack's neck, and Tom and Jerry seemed to have all they could do to pull him out. After which I got a solemn scolding for asking the poor beast to jump into such a soft, bottomless place. We moved into our frame-house in the fall, when mother with the rest of the family arrived from Scotland, and when the winter snow began to fly, the Burr Oak shanty was made into a stable for Jack. Father told us that good Meadowhay was all he required, but we fed him corn, lots of it, and he grew very frisky and fat. About the middle of winter his long hair was full of dust, and, as we thought, required washing. So without taking the frosty weather into account we gave him a thorough soap and water scouring, and as we failed to get him rubbed dry, a roll of icicles formed under his belly. Father happened to see him in this condition and angrily asked what we had been about. We said Jack was dirty, and we had washed him to make him healthy. He told us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, soaking the poor beast in cold water at this time of year, and when we wanted to clean him we should have sense enough to use the brush and curry-comb. In summer Dave or I had to write after the cows every evening about sundown, and Jack got so accustomed to bringing in the drove that when we happened to be a few minutes late he used to go off alone at the regular time and bring them home at a gallop. It used to make Father very angry to see Jack chasing the cows like a shepherd dog, running from one to the other, and giving each a bite on the rump to keep them on the run, flying before him as if pursued by wolves. Father would declare at times that the wicked beast had the devil in him and would be the death of the cattle. The corral and barn were just at the foot of a hill, and he made a great display of the drove on the home stretch as they walloped down that hill with their tails on end. One evening when the Pelmel Wild West Show was at its wildest, it made Father so extravagantly mad that he ordered me to shoot Jack. I went to the house and brought the gun, suffering most horrible mental anguish such as, I suppose, unhappy Abraham felt when commanded to slay Isaac. Jack's life was spared, however, though I can't tell what finally became of him. I wish I could. After Father bought a span of workhorses he was sold to a man who said he was going to ride him across the plains to California. We had him, I think, some five or six years. He was the stoutest, gentlest, bravest little horse I ever saw. He never seemed tired, could canter all day with a man about as heavy as himself on his back, and feared nothing. Once fifty or sixty pounds of beef that was tied on his back slid over his shoulders along his neck and weighed down his head to the ground, fairly anchoring him. But he stood patient and still for half an hour or so without making the slightest struggle to free himself, while I was away getting help to untie the pack-rope and set the load back in its place. As I was the eldest boy I had the care of our first span of workhorses. Their names were Knob and Nell. Knob was very intelligent and even affectionate, and could learn almost anything. Nell was entirely different, bulky and stubborn, though we managed to teach her a good many circus tricks. But she never seemed to like to play with us in anything like an affectionate way as Knob did. We turned them out one day into the pasture and an Indian, hiding in the brush that had sprung up after the grass fires had been kept out, managed to catch Knob, tied a rope to her jaw for a bridle, rode her to Green Lake about thirty or forty miles away, and tried to sell her for fifteen dollars. All our hearts were sore, as if one of the family had been lost. We hunted everywhere and could not at first imagine what had become of her. We discovered her track where the fence was broken down, and following it for a few miles made sure the track was Knob's, and a neighbor told us he had seen an Indian riding fast through the woods on a horse that looked like Knob. But we could find no further trace of her until a month or two after she was lost, and we had given up hope of ever seeing her again. Then we learned that she had been taken from an Indian by a farmer at Green Lake, because he saw that she had been shod and had worked in harness. So when the Indian tried to sell her the farmer said, You are a thief. This is a white man's horse. You stole her. No, said the Indian. I bought her from Prairidhushin, and she has always been mine. The man, pointing to her feet and the marks of the harness, said, You are lying. I will take that horse away from you and put her in my pasture, and if you come near it I will set the dogs on you. Then he advertised her. One of our neighbors happened to see the advertisement and brought us the glad news. Then great was our rejoicing when father brought her home. That Indian must have treated her with terrible cruelty, for when I was riding her through the pasture several years afterward looking for another horse that we wanted to catch, as we approached the place where she had been captured she stood stock still gazing through the bushes, fearing the Indian might still be hiding there ready to spring. And she was so excited that she trembled, and her heartbeats were so loud that I could hear them distinctly as I sat on her back, bump, bump, bump, like the drumming of a partridge, so vividly had she remembered her terrible experiences. She was a great pet and favorite with the whole family, quickly learned playful tricks, came running when we called, seemed to know everything we said to her, and had the utmost confidence in our friendly kindness. We used to cut and shock and husk the Indian corn in the fall until a keen Yankee stopped overnight at our house and among other labor-saving notions, convinced father that it was better to let it stand, and husk it at his leisure during the winter, then turn in the cattle to eat the leaves and trample down the stalks so that they could be plowed under in the spring. In this winter method each of us took two rows and husked into baskets and emptied the corn on the ground in piles of fifteen to twenty basketfuls, then loaded it into the wagon to be hauled to the crib. This was coal-painful work, the temperature being oftentimes far below zero, and the ground covered with dry, frosty snow, giving rise to miserable crops of chill-blains and frosted fingers. A sad change from the merry Indian summer husking when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared fields. Golden corn, golden pumpkins gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad change indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens and squirrels and mice that came about us. The piles of corn were often left in the field several days, and while loading them into the wagon we usually found field mice in them, big blunt-nosed, strong-scented fellows that we were taught to kill just because they nibbled a few grains of corn. I used to hold one, while it was still warm, up to Knob's nose for the fun of seeing her make faces and snort at the smell of it. And I would say, here, Knob, as if offering her a lump of sugar, one day I offered her an extra fine, fat, plump specimen, something like a little woodchuck or musk-grat, and to my astonishment, after smelling it curiously and doubtfully, as if wondering what the gift might be, and rubbing it back and forth in the palm of my hand with her upper lip, she deliberately took it into her mouth, crunched and munched and chewed it fine, and swallowed it, bones, teeth, head, tail, everything. Not a single hair of that mouse was wasted. While she was chewing it she nodded and grunted, as though critically tasting and relishing it. My father was a steadfast enthusiast on religious matters, and, of course, attended almost every sort of church meeting, especially revival meetings. They were occasionally held in summer, but mostly in winter when the slaying was good and plenty of time available. One hot summer day father drove Knob to Portage and back, twenty-four miles over a sandy road. It was hot, hard, sultry day's work, and she had evidently been overdriven in order to get home in time for one of these meetings. I shall never forget how tired and wilted she looked that evening when I unhitched her, how she drooped in her stall, too tired to eat or even to lie down. Next morning it was plain that her lungs were inflamed, all the dreadful symptoms were just the same as my own when I had pneumonia. Father sent for a Methodist minister, a very energetic, resourceful man, who was a blacksmith, farmer, butcher, and horse-doctor as well as minister. But all his gifts and skill were of no avail. Knob was doomed. We bathed her head and tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't eat, and in about a couple of weeks we turned her loose to let her come round the house and see us in the weary suffering and loneliness of the shadow of death. She tried to follow us children so long her friends and workmates and playmates. It was awfully touching. She had several hemorrhages, and in the forenoon of her last day, after she had had one of her dreadful spells of bleeding and gasping for breath, she came to me trembling with the seeching, heartbreaking looks, and after I had bathed her head and tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down and gasped and died. All the family gathered about her, weeping with aching hearts, then dust to dust. She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate, human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many advantages of farm life for boys, one of the greatest is the gaining a real knowledge of animals as fellow mortals, learning to respect them and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus God-like sympathy grows and thrives and spreads, far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, for too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved. At first we were afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler, and we both saw the copperhead. One day when my brother came in from his work he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer, buzzy noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm, though we heard of them being common on limestone hills eight or ten miles distant. We discovered the copperhead when we were plowing, and we saw and felt at the first long, fixed, half-charmed admiring stare at him that he was an awfully dangerous fellow. Every fiber of his strong, lithe, quivering body, his burnished copper-colored head, and above all his fierce, able eyes, seemed to be overflowing full of deadly power and bait us beware. And yet it is only fair to say that this terrible, beautiful reptile showed no disposition to hurt us until we threw clods at him and tried to head him off from a log fence into which he was trying to escape. We were barefooted and, of course, afraid to let him get very near, while we vainly battered him with the loose, sandy clods of the freshly plowed field to hold him back until we could get a stick. Seeing us in the eyes after a moment's pause, he probably saw we were afraid, and he came right straight at us, snapping and looking terrible, drove us out of his way and won his fight. Out on the open sandy hills there were a good mini-thick, burly blow-snakes, the kind that puffed themselves up and hiss. Our Yankee declared that their breath was very poisonous and that we must not go near them. A handsome, ringed species common in damp, shady places was, he told us, the most wonderful of all the snakes, four if chopped into pieces, however small, the fragments would wriggle themselves together again, and the restored snake would go on about its business as if nothing had happened. The commonest kinds were the striped, slender species of the meadows and streams, good swimmers that lived mostly on frogs. Once I observed one of the larger ones about two feet long pursuing a frog in our meadow, and it was wonderful to see how fast the legless, footless, wingless, finless hunter could run. The frog, of course, knew its enemy and was making desperate efforts to escape to the water and hide in the marsh mud. He was a fine, sleek yellow muscular fellow and was springing over the tall grass in wide, arching jumps. The green striped snake, gliding swiftly and steadily, was keeping the frog in sight, and had I not interfered would probably have tired out the poor jumper, then perhaps while digesting and enjoying his meal the happy snake would himself be swallowed, frog and all, by a hawk. Again to our astonishment the small specimens were attacked by our hens. They pursued and pecked away at them until they killed and devoured them, oftentimes quarreling over the division of the spoil, though it was not easily divided. We watched the habits of the swift darting dragonflies, wild bees, butterflies, wasps, beetles, etc., and soon learned to discriminate between those that might be safely handled and the pinching or stinging species, but of all our wild neighbors the mosquitoes were the first with which we became very intimately acquainted. The beautiful meadow, line warm in the spring sunshine, outspread between our lily-rimmed lake and the hill-slope that our shanty stood on, sent forth thirsty swarms of a little gray, speckly, singing, stinging pests, and how tellingly they introduced themselves. Of little avail were the smudges that we made on muggy evenings to drive them away, and amid the many lessons which they insisted upon teaching us, we wondered more and more at the extent of their knowledge, especially that in their tiny, flimsy bodies room could be found for such cunning pallets. They would drink their fill from brown smoky Indians, or from old white folk flavoured with tobacco and whisky when no better could be had, but the surpassing fineness of their taste was best manifested by their enthusiastic appreciation of boys full of lively red blood, and of girls in full bloom fresh from cool Scotland or England. On these it was pleasant to witness their enjoyment as they feasted. Indians, we were told, believed that if they were brave fighters they would go after death to a happy country abounding in game where there were no mosquitoes and no cowards. For cowards were driven away by themselves to a miserable country where there was no game fit to eat and where the sky was always dark with huge gnats and mosquitoes as big as pigeons. We were great admirers of the little black waterbugs. Their whole lives seemed to be placed skimming, swimming, swirling, and waltzing together in little groups on the edge of the lake, and in the meadow springs, dancing to music we never could hear. The long-legged skaters, too, seemed wonderful fellows shuffling about on top of the water with air bubbles like little bladders tangled under their hairy feet, and we often wished that we also might be shod in the same way to enable us to skate on the lake in summer as well as in icy winter. Not less wonderful were the boatmen swimming on their backs, pulling themselves along with a pair of oar-like legs. Great was the delight of brothers David and Daniel and myself when Father gave us a few pine boards for a boat, and it was a memorable day when we got that boat built and launched into the lake. Never shall I forget our first sail over the gradually deepening water, the sunbeams pouring through it revealing the strange plants covering the bottom, and the fishes coming about us staring and wondering as if the boat were a monstrous, strange fish. The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be miraculously sustained in the air while silently exploring a veritable fairyland. We always had to work hard, but if we worked still harder we were occasionally allowed a little spell in the long summer evenings about sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without fishing rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually learned something about its inhabitants. Pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, et cetera. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, plowing up and shoving away the soft gray mud with their noses, like pigs, forming round bowls five or six inches in depth and about two feet in diameter in which their eggs were deposited. And with what beautiful unwariable devotion they watched and hovered over them and chased away prowling, spawn-eating enemies that ventured within a rod or two of the precious nest. The pickerel is a savage fish, endowed with marvelous strength and speed. It lies in wait for its prey on the bottom, perfectly motionless like a waterlogged stick, watching everything that moves with fierce, hungry eyes. Often times when we were fishing for some other kinds over the edge of the boat, a pickerel that we had not noticed would come like a bolt of lightning and seize the fish we had caught before we could get it into the boat. The very first pickerel that I ever caught jumped into the air to seize a small fish dangling on my line and, missing its aim, fell plump into the boat as if it had dropped from the sky. Some of our neighbors fished for pickerel through the ice in midwinter. They usually drove a wagon out onto the lake, set a large number of lines baited with live minnows, hung a loop of the lines over a small bush planted at the side of each hole, and watched to see the loops pulled off when a fish had taken the bait. Large quantities of pickerel were often caught in this cruel way. Our beautiful lake, named Fountain Lake by Father but Mears Lake by the neighbors, is one of the many small glacier lakes that adorn the Wisconsin landscapes. It is fed by twenty or thirty meadow springs, is about a half a mile long, half as wide, and surrounded by low, finely mottled hills dotted with oak and hickory, and meadows full of grasses and sedges and many beautiful orchids and ferns. First there is a zone of green shining rushes, and just beyond the rushes a zone of white and orange water lilies fifty or sixty feet wide forming a magnificent border. On bright days, when the lake was rippled by a breeze, the lilies and sun-spangles danced together in radiant beauty and it became difficult to discriminate between them. On Sundays after or before chores and sermons and Bible lessons we drifted about on the lake for hours, especially in lily time, getting finest lessons and sermons from the water and flowers, ducks, fishes, and muskrats. In particular we took Christ's advice and devoutly considered the lilies how they grow up in beauty out of gray lime mud and ride gloriously among the breezy sun-spangles. On our way home we gathered grand bouquets of them to be kept fresh all the week. No flower was hailed with greater wonder and admiration by the European settlers in general, Scotch, English, and Irish, than this white water lily, nipfea adorada. It is a magnificent plant, queen of the inland waters, pure white, three or four inches in diameter, the most beautiful, sumptuous, and deliciously fragrant of all our Wisconsin flowers. No lily garden in civilization we had ever seen could compare with our lake garden. The next most admirable flower in the estimation of settlers in this part of the New World was the Pasc Flower, or Wind Flower, Anenomy Patens, variant Nutaliana. It is the very first to appear in the spring, covering the cold, gray-black ground with cheery blossoms. Before the axe or plow had touched the oak openings of Wisconsin, they were swept by running fires almost every autumn after the grass became dry. If from any cause, such as early snowstorms or late rains, they happened to escape the autumn fire bison, they were likely to be burned in the spring after the snow melted. But whether burned in the spring or fall, ashes and bits of charred twigs and grass stems made the whole country look dismal. Then, before a single grass blade had sprouted, a hopeful multitude of large, hairy, silky buds about as thick as one's thumb came to light, pushing up through the black and gray ashes and cinders, and before these buds were fairly free from the ground they opened wide and displayed purple blossoms about two inches in diameter, giving beauty for ashes in glorious abundance. After remaining in the ground awaiting for warm weather and companions, this admirable plant seems to be in haste to rise and cheer the desolate landscape. Then at its leisure, after other plants had come to its help, it spread its leaves and grew up to a height of about two or three feet. The spreading leaves formed a hurl on the ground and another about the middle of the stem as an involucre, and on top of the stem the silky, hairy, long-tailed seeds formed ahead like a second flower. A little church was established among the early settlers and the meetings at first were held in our house. After working hard all the week it was difficult for boys to sit still through long sermons without falling asleep, especially in warm weather. In this drowsy trouble the charming anemone came to our help. A pocketful of the pungent seeds industriously nibbled while the discourses were at their dullest kept us awake and filled our minds with flowers. The next great flower wonders on which we lavished admiration not only for beauty of color and size, but for their curious shapes, were the syphropediums called ladieslippers or Indian moccasins. They were so different from the familiar flowers of old Scotland. All species grew in our meadow and on shady hillsides, yellow, rose colored and some nearly white, an inch or more in diameter, and shaped exactly like Indian moccasins. They caught the eye of all the European settlers and made them gaze and wonder like children. And so did Calopogon, Pogonia, Speranthes, and many other fine plant people that lived in our meadow. The beautiful turks' turban, lilium supervum, growing on streambanks, was rare in our neighborhood, but the orange lili grew in abundance on dry ground beneath the Burr Oaks and often brought Aunt Ray's lily-bed in Scotland to mind. The butterfly weed, with its brilliant scarlet flowers, attracted flocks of butterflies and made fine masses of color. With autumn came a glorious abundance and variety of asters, those beautiful plant stars, together with golden rods, sunflowers, daisies, and leatrous of different species, all around the shady margin of the meadow many ferns in beds and vase-like groups spread their beautiful fronds, especially the osmundus, Claytoniana, regalis, and cinnamomea, and the sensitive and ostrich ferns. Early in summer we feasted on strawberries that grew in rich beds beneath the meadow grasses and sedges as well as in the dry, sunny woods. And in different bogs and marshes and around their borders on our own farm and along the Fox River we found dewberries and cranberries, and a glorious perfusion of huckleberries, the fountain heads of pies of wondrous taste and size, colored in the heart like sunsets. Nor were we slow to discover the value of the hickory trees, yielding both sugar and nuts. We carefully counted the different kinds on our farm and every morning when we could steal a few minutes before breakfast after doing the chores, we visited the trees that had been wounded by the axe to scrape off and enjoy the thick, white, delicious syrup that exuded from them, and gathered the nuts as they fell in the mellow Indian summer, making haste to get a fair share with the sap suckers and squirrels. The hickory makes fine masses of color in the fall, every leaf a flower, but it was a sweet sap and sweet nuts that first interested us. No harvest in the Wisconsin woods was ever gathered with more pleasure and care. Also to our delight we found plenty of hazelnuts, and in a few places abundance of wild apples. They were desperately sour, and we used to fill our pockets with them and dare each other to eat one without making a face. No easy feat. One hot summer day Father told us that we ought to learn to swim. This was one of the most interesting suggestions he had ever offered, but precious little time was allowed for trips to the lake, and he seldom tried to show us how. Go to the frogs, he said, and they will give you all the lessons you need. Watch their arms and legs and see how smoothly they kick themselves along and dive and come up. When you want to dive, keep your arms by your side or over your head, and kick, and when you want to come up let your legs drag and paddle with your hands. We found a little basin among the rushes at the south end of the lake, about waist-deep and a rod or two wide, shaped like a sunfish's nest. Here we kicked and plashed for many a lesson, faithfully trying to imitate frogs, but the smooth, comfortable sliding gate of our amphibious teachers seemed hopelessly hard to learn. When we tried to kick frog-fashion down when our heads, as if weighted with lead, the moment our feet left the ground. One day it occurred to me to hold my breath as long as I could and let my head sink as far as it liked without paying any attention to it, and try to swim under the water instead of on the surface. This method was a great success, for at the very first trial I managed to cross the basin without touching bottom, and soon learned the use of my limbs. Then of course swimming with my head above water soon became so easy that it seemed perfectly natural. David tried the plan with the same success. Then we began to count the number of times that we could swim around the basin without stopping to rest, and after twenty or thirty rounds failed to tire us, we proudly thought that a little more practice would make us about as amphibious as frogs. On the fourth of July of this swimming year one of the Lawson boys came to visit us, and we went down to the lake to spend the great warm day with the fishes and ducks and turtles. After gliding about on the smooth, mirror water, telling stories and enjoying the company of the happy creatures about us, we rode to our bathing pool, and David and I went in for a swim, while our companion fished from the boat a little way out beyond the rushes. After a few turns in the pool it occurred to me that it was now about time to try deep water. Swimming through the thick growth of rushes and lilies was somewhat dangerous, especially for a beginner, because one's arms and legs might be entangled among the long, limber stems. Nevertheless I ventured and struck out boldly enough for the boat, where the water was twenty or thirty feet deep. When I reached the end of the little skiff I raised my right hand to take hold of it to surprise Lawson, whose back was toward me and who was not aware of my approach, but I failed to reach high enough and, of course, the weight of my arm and the stroke against the overleaning stern of the boat shoved me down, and I sank, struggling, frightened, and confused. As soon as my feet touched the bottom I slowly rose to the surface, but before I could get breath enough to call for help sank back again and lost all control of myself. After sinking and rising I don't know how many times some water got into my lungs and I began to drown. Then suddenly my mind seemed to clear. I remembered that I could swim underwater, and making a desperate struggle toward the shore I reached a point where with my toes on the bottom I got my mouth above the surface, gasped for help, and was pulled into the boat. This humiliating accident spoiled the day, and we all agreed to keep it a profound secret. My sister Sarah had heard my cry for help and on our arrival at the house inquired what had happened. Were you drowning, John? I heard you cry. You couldn't get out. Lawson made haste to reply, Oh no! He was just havern making fun. I was very much ashamed of myself, and at night, after calmly reviewing the affair, concluded that there had been no reasonable cause for the accident, and that I ought to punish myself for so nearly losing my life from unmanly fear. Accordingly at the very first opportunity I stole away to the lake by myself, got into my boat, and instead of going back to the old swimming-bowl for further practice or to try to do sanely and well what I had so anonymously failed to do in my first adventure, that is, to swim out through the rushes and lilies, I rode directly out to the middle of the lake, stripped, stood up on the seat in the stern, and with grim deliberation took a header and dove straight down thirty or forty feet, turned easily, and letting my feet drag paddle straight to the surface with my hands, as Father had at first directed me to do. I then swam around the boat, glorying in my suddenly acquired confidence and victory over myself, climbed into it and dived again with the same triumph and success. I think I went down four or five times, and each time as I made the dive-spring shouted aloud, take that, feeling that I was getting most gloriously even with myself. Never again from that day to this have I lost control of myself in water. If suddenly thrown overboard at sea in the dark or even while asleep, I think I would immediately write myself in a way some would call instinct, rise among the waves, catch my breath, and try to plan what could be better done. Never was victory over self more complete. I have been a good swimmer ever since. At a slow gait I think I could swim all day in smooth water, moderate in temperature. When I was a student at Madison I used to go on long swimming journeys called exploring expeditions along the south shore of Lake Mendota on Saturdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with another amphibious explorer by the name of Fuller. My adventures in Fountain Lake called to mind the story of a boy who, in climbing a tree to rob a crow's nests, fell and broke his leg, but as soon as it healed compelled himself to climb to the top of the tree he had fallen from. Like scotch children in general we were taught grim self-denial in season and out of season. To mortify the flesh, keep our bodies in subjection to Bible laws, and mercilessly punish our self for every fault imagined or committed. A little boy while helping his sister to drive home the cows happened to use a forbidden word. I'll have to tell Father on ye, said the horrified sister. I'll tell him that ye said a bad word. Well, the boy, by way of excuse, I couldn't help the word coming into me, and it's not war to speak it out then to let it run through ye. The scotch fiddler, playing at a wedding, drank so much whiskey that on the way home he fell by the roadside. In the morning he was ashamed and angry and determined to punish himself, making haste to the house of a friend, a gamekeeper, he called him out and requested the loan of a gun. The alarmed gamekeeper, not liking the fiddler's looks and voice, anxiously inquired what he was going to do with it. Surely, he said, you're not going to shoot yourself. No! With characteristic candor replied the penitent fiddler. I didn't think I was just exactly kill myself, but I was going to take a dander dune the burn, broke with the gun, and give myself a devil of a flag, fright. One calm summer evening a red-headed woodpecker was drowned in our lake. An accident happened at the south end opposite our memorable swimming-hole, a few rods from the place where I came so near being drowned years before. I had returned to the old home during a summer vacation of the State University, and having made a beginning in botany I was, of course, full of enthusiasm, and ran eagerly to my beloved Pagonia, Kalapogon, and Cypropetium Gardens, Osmunda Furnaries, and the Lake Lillies and Pitcher Plants. A little before sundown the day breeze died away, and the lake reflecting the wooded hills like a mirror was dimpled and dotted and streaked here and there. Morphishes and turtles were poking out their heads, and muskrats were sculling themselves along with their flat tails, making glittering tracks. After lingering a while, dreamily recalling the old hard half- happy days, and watching my favorite red-headed woodpeckers pursuing maws like regular flycatchers, I swam out through the rushes and up the middle of the lake, to the north end and back, gliding slowly looking about me, enjoying the scenery as I would in a saunter along the shore, and studying the habits of the animals as they were explained and recorded on the smooth, glassy water. On the way back, when I was within a hundred rods or so of the end of my voyage, I noticed a peculiar, plashing disturbance that could not, I thought, be made by a jumping fish or any other inhabitant of the lake. Or instead of low, regular, out-circling ripples such as are made by the popping up of a head, or like those raised by the quick splash of a leaping fish or diving loon or muskrat, a continuous struggle was kept up for several minutes ere the outspreading, interfering ring-waves began to die away. Swimming hastily to the spot to try to discover what had happened, I found one of my woodpeckers floating motionless without spread wings. All was over. Had I been a minute or two earlier, I might have saved him. He had glanced on the water, I suppose, in pursuit of a moth, was unable to rise from it, and died struggling, as I nearly did at this same spot. Like me he seemed to have lost his mind in blind confusion and fear. The water was warm, and had he kept still with his head a little above the surface, he would sooner or later have been wafted ashore. The best-aimed flights of birds and man gang aft angly, but this was the first case I had witnessed of a bird losing its life by drowning. Doubtless accidents to animals are far more common than is generally known. I have seen quails killed by flying against our house when suddenly startled. Some birds get entangled in hairs of their own nests and die. Once I found a poor snipe in our meadow that was unable to fly on account of difficult egg-birth. Pitying the poor mother I picked her up out of the grass and helped her as gently as I could, and as soon as the egg was born she flew gladly away. Oftentimes I have thought it strange that one could walk through the woods and mountains and plains for years without seeing a single blood-spot. Most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being noticed. Nevertheless we, at last, sadly learned that they are all subject to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves. Many birds lose their lives in storms. I remember a particularly severe Wisconsin winter when the temperature was many degrees below zero and the snow was deep, preventing the quail which feed on the ground from getting anything like enough of food, as was pitifully shown by a flock I found on our farm frozen solid in a thicket of oak sprouts. They were in a circle about a foot wide with their heads outward packed close together for warmth, yet all had died without a struggle, perhaps more from starvation than frost. Many small birds lose their lives in the storms of early spring or even summer. One mild spring morning I picked up more than a score out of the grass and flowers, most of them darling singers that had perished in a sudden storm of sleety rain and hail. In a hollow at the foot of an oak tree that I had chopped down one cold winter day I found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its snug grassy nest, in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat it had carefully gathered. I carried it home and gradually thawed and warmed it in the kitchen, hoping it would come to life like a pickerel I caught in our lake through a hole in the ice, which, after being frozen as hard as a bone and thawed at the fireside, turned itself out of the grasp of the crook when she began to scrape it, bounced off the table and danced about on the floor, making wonderful springy jumps as if trying to find its way back home to the lake, but for the poor spermophile nothing I could do in the way of revival was of any avail. Its life had passed away without the slightest struggle as it lay asleep curled up like a ball with its tail wrapped about it. CHAPTER IV A PARADISE OF BIRDS BIRD FAVERITS THE PURRY CHICKENS WATER FOWL A LUNE ON THE DEFENSIVE PASSENGER PIDGES The Wisconsin oak openings were a summer paradise for songbirds and a fine place to get acquainted with them, for the trees stood wide apart, allowing one to see the happy home-seekers as they arrived in the spring, their mating, nest-building, the brooding and feeding of the young, and, after they were full-fledged and strong, to see all the families of the neighborhood gathering and getting ready to leave in the fall. Accepting the geese and ducks and pigeons, nearly all of our summer birds arrived singly, or in small, draggled flocks, but when frost and falling leaves brought their winter homes to mind, they assembled in large flocks on dead or leafless trees by the side of a meadow or field, perhaps to get acquainted and talk the thing over. Some species held regular daily meetings for several weeks before finally setting forth on their long, southern journeys. Strange to say, we never saw them start. Some morning we would find them gone. Doubtless they migrated in the night-time. Comparatively few species remained all winter, the nut-hatch, chickadee, owl, prairie chicken, quail, and a few stragglers from the main flocks of ducks, jays, hawks, and bluebirds. Only after the country was settled did either jays or bluebirds winter with us. The brave, frost-defined chickadees and nut-hatches stayed all the year, wholly independent of farms and man's food and affairs. With the first hints of spring came the brave little bluebirds, plain singers as blue as the best sky, and, of course, we all love them. Their rich, crisp warbling is perfectly delightful, soothing and cheering, sweet and whisperingly low. Nature's fine love touches every note, going straight home into one's heart. And with all they are hearty and brave, fearless fighters in defensive home. When we boys approached their knothole nests, the bold little fellows kept scolding and diving at us, and tried to strike us in the face, and oftentimes we were afraid they would prick our eyes. But the boldness of the little housekeepers only made us love them the more. None of the bird-people of Wisconsin welcomed us more heartily than the common robin. Far from showing alarm at the coming of settlers into their native woods, they reared their young around our gardens as if they liked us. And how heartily we admired the beauty and fine manners of these graceful birds, and their loud, cheery song of Fear not, fear not, cheer up, cheer up! It was easy to love them, for they reminded us of the robin-red breast of Scotland. Like the bluebirds, they dared every danger in defensive home. And we often wondered that birds so gentle could be so bold and that sweet-voiced singers could so fiercely fight and scold. Of all the great singers that sweetened Wisconsin, one of the best known and best loved is the brown thrush, or thrasher, strong and able without being familiar, and easily seen and heard. Rosie-purple evenings after thundershowers are the favorite song times when the winds have died away and the steaming ground and the leaves and flowers fill the air with fragrance. Then the mail makes haste to the topmost spray of an oak tree, and sings loud and clear, with delightful enthusiasm until sundown. Mostly I suppose for his mate sitting on the precious eggs in a brush-heap. And how faithful and watchful and daring he is! Woe to the snake or squirrel that ventured to go nigh the nest! We often saw him diving on them, pecking them about the head, and driving them away as bravely as the kingbird drives away hawks. The rich and varied strains made the air fairly quiver. We boys often tried to interpret the wild, ringing melody and put it into words. After the arrival of the thrushes came the bobble-links, gushing, gurgling inexhaustible fountains of song, pouring forth floods of sweet notes over the broad Fox River meadows in wonderful variety and volume crowded and mixed beyond description, as they hovered on quivering wings above their hidden nests in the grass. It seemed marvelous to us that birds so moderate in size could hold so much of this wonderful song-stuff. Each one of them poured forth music enough for a whole flock, singing as if its whole body, feathers and all, were made up of music, flowing, glowing, bubbling melody, interpenetrated here and there, with small, scintillating prickles and spicules. We never became so intimately acquainted with the bobble-links as with the thrushes, for they lived far out on the broad Fox River meadows, while the thrushes sang on the treetops around every home. The bobble-links were among the first of our great singers to leave us in the fall, going apparently direct to the rice fields of the southern states, where they grew fat and were slaughtered in countless numbers for food, sad fate for singers so purely divine. One of the gayest of the singers is the red-winged blackbird. In the spring, when his scarlet epaulets shine brightest and his little modest gray wife is sitting on the nest, built on rushes in a swamp, he sits on a nearby oak and devotedly sings almost all day. His rich simple strain is Bompali, Bompali, or Boppali, as interpreted by some. In summer, after nesting cares are over, they assemble in flocks of hundreds and thousands to feast on Indian corn when it is in the milk. Scattering over a field, each selects an ear, strips the husk down far enough to lay bare an inch or two of the end of it, enjoys an exhilarating feast, and, after all are full, they rise simultaneously with a quick beer of wings, like an old-fashioned church congregation fluttering to their feet when the minister, after giving out the hymn, says, let the congregation arise and sing. A lighting on nearby trees they sing with a hearty vengeance, bursting out without any puttering prelude in glorious glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling Bompali's mingled with chippy, vibrant, and exploding gobbles of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy song, a combination unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom, something like bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices, all bursting and bubbling at once. Then suddenly some one of the joyful congregation shouts, cheer, cheer, and all stop as if shot. The sweet-voiced meadowlark, with its placid, simple song of Piri iri-ordico, was another favorite, and we soon learned to admire the Baltimore Oriole and its wonderful hanging nests and the scarlet tannager glowing like fire amid the green leaves. But no singer of them all got farther into our hearts than the little speckle-breasted song-spirrel, one of the first to arrive and begin nest-building and singing. The richness, sweetness, and pathos of this small darling song as he sat on a low bush often brought tears to our eyes. The little cheery, modest chickadee midget, loved by every innocent boy and girl, man and woman, and by many not altogether innocent, as one of the first of the birds to attract our attention, drawing nearer and nearer to us as the winter advanced, bravely singing his faint, silvery, lisping, tinkly notes, ending with a bright dee-dee-dee, however frosty the weather. The nut-hatches, who also stayed all winter with us, were favorites with us boys. We loved to watch them as they traced the bark furrows of the oaks and hickories head downward, deftly flicking off loose scales and splinters in search of insects, and braving the coldest weather as if their little sparks of life were as safely warm in winter as in summer, unquenchable by the severest frost. With the help of the chickadees they made a delightful stir in the solemn winter days, and when we were out-chopping we never ceased to wonder how their slender naked toes could be kept warm when our own were so painfully frosted, though clad in thick socks and boots. And we wondered, and admired the more when we thought of the little midget sleeping in knotholes when the temperature was far below zero, sometimes thirty-five degrees below, and in the morning after a minute breakfast of a few frozen insects and whore-frost crystals playing and chatting in cheery tones as if food, weather, and everything was according to their own warm hearts. Our Yankee told us that the name of this darling was Devil Downhead. Their big neighbors, the owls, also made good winter music, singing out loud in wild, gallant strains bespeaking brave comfort, let the frostbite as it might. The solemn hooting of the species with the widest throat seemed to us the very wildest of all the winter sounds. Prairie chickens came strolling in family flocks about the shanty, picking seeds and grasshoppers like domestic fowls, and they became still more abundant as wheat and cornfields were multiplied, but also wilder of course when every shotgun in the country was aimed at them. The booming of the males during the mating season was one of the loudest and strangest of the early spring sounds. Weeping easily heard on calm mornings at a distance of half or three-fourths of a mile. As soon as the snow was off the ground, they assembled in flocks of a dozen or two on an open spot, usually on the side of a plowed field. Ruffled up their feathers, inflated the curious-colored sacks on the sides of their necks, and strutted about with queer gestures, something like turkey goblers, uttering strange, loud, rounded, humming calls, boom, boom, boom, interrupted by choking sounds. My brother Daniel caught one while she was sitting on her nest in our cornfield. The young are just like domestic chicks, run with the mother as soon as hatched, and stay with her until autumn, feeding on the ground, never taking wing unless disturbed. In winter, when full grown they assemble in large flocks, fly about sundown to selected roosting places on tall trees, and to feeding places in the morning, unhusked cornfields, if any are to be found in the neighborhood, or thickets of dwarf, birch, and willows, the buds of which furnish a considerable part of their food when snow covers the ground. The wild rice marshes along the Fox River and around Puckaway Lake were the summer homes of millions of ducks, and in the Indian summer, when the rice was ripe, they grew very fat. The magnificent mallards in particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts, almost without a price, for often as many as a half dozen were killed at a shot. But we seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting, and so got very few. The autumn duck season was a glad time for the Indians also, for they feasted and grew fat not only on the ducks, but on the wild rice, large quantities of which they gathered as they glided through the midst of the generous crop in canoes, bending down handfuls over the sides and beating out the grain with small paddles. The warmth of the deep spring fountains of the creek in our meadow kept it open all the year, and a few pairs of wood ducks the most beautiful we thought of all the ducks wintered in it, I well remember the first specimen I ever saw. Others shot it in the creek during a snowstorm, brought it into the house and called us around him, saying, come, barons, and admire the work of God displayed in this bonny bird. Nobody but God could paint feathers like these. Just look at the colors, how they shine, and how fine they overlap and blend together, like the colors of the rainbow. And we all agreed that never, never before had we seen so awful bonny a bird. A pair nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet high that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how they got the fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the meadow to the lake when they were only helpless, featherless midgets. Whether the mother carried them to the water on her back or in her mouth, I never saw the thing done or found anybody who had until this summer when Mr. Holibird, a keen observer, told me that he once saw the mother carry them from the nest tree in her mouth, quickly coming and going to a nearby stream, and in a few minutes get them all together and proudly sail away. Sometimes a flock of swans were seen passing over at a great height on their long journeys, and we admired their clear bugle notes. But they seldom visited any of the lakes in our neighborhood, so seldom that when they did it was talked of for years. One was shot by a blacksmith on a mill pond with a long, rain-sharp rifle, and many of the neighbors went far to see it. The common gray goose, Canada Honker, flying in regular, hero-shaped flocks, was one of the wildest and warriest of all the large birds that enlivened the spring and autumn. They seldom ventured to a light in our small lake, fearing I suppose that hunters might be concealed in the rushes, but on account of their fondness for the young leaves of winter wheat when they were a few inches high, they often alighted on our fields when passing on their way south, and occasionally even in our cornfields when a snowstorm was blowing and they were hungry and wing-weary with nearly an inch of snow on their backs. In such times of distress we used to pity them. Even while trying to get a shot at them. They were exceedingly cautious and circumspect. Usually flew several times around the adjacent thickets and fences to make sure that no enemy was near before settling down, and one always stood on guard, relieved from time to time while the flock was feeding. Therefore there was no chance to creep up on them unobserved. You had to be well hidden before the flock arrived. It was the ambition of boys to be able to shoot these weary birds. I never got but two, both of them, at one so-called lucky shot. When I ran to pick them up one of them flew away, but as the poor fellow was sorely wounded he didn't fly far. When I caught him after a short chase he uttered a piercing cry of terror and despair which the leader of the flock heard at a distance of about a hundred rods. They had flown off in frightened disorder, of course, but had got into the regular, hero-shaped order when the leader heard the cry, and I shall never forget how bravely he left his place at the head of the flock and hurried back, screaming, and struck at me in trying to save his companion. I dodged down and held my hands over my head and thus escaped a blow of his elbows. Fortunately I had left my gun at the fence and the life of this noble bird was spared after he had risked it in trying to save his wounded friend or neighbor or family relation. For so shy a bird boldly to attack a hunter showed wonderful sympathy and courage. This is one of my strangest hunting experiences. Never before had I regarded wild geese as dangerous or capable of such noble self-sacrificing devotion. The loud, clear call of the handsome bob whites was one of the pleasantest and most characteristic of our spring sounds, and we soon learned to imitate it so well that a bold cock often accepted our challenge and came flying to fight. The young run as soon as they are hatched and follow their parents until spring, roosting on the ground in a close bunch, heads out ready to scatter and fly. These fine birds were seldom seen when we first arrived in the wilderness, but when wheat fields supplied abundance of food they multiplied very fast, although oftentimes sore-pressed during hard winters when the snow reached a depth of two or three feet, covering their food, while the mercury fell to twenty or thirty degrees below zero. Occasionally, although shy on account of being persistently hunted, under pressures of extreme hunger in the very coldest weather, when the snow was deepest, they ventured into barnyards and even approached the doorsteps of houses searching for any sort of scraps and crumbs, as if piteously begging for food. One of our neighbors saw a flock come creeping up through the snow, unable to fly, hardly able to walk, and while approaching the door, several of them actually fell down and died, showing that birds, usually so vigorous and apparently independent of fortune, suffer and lose their lives in extreme weather like the rest of us, frozen to death like settlers caught in blizzards. None of our neighbors perished in storms, though many had feet, ears and fingers frost-nipped or solidly frozen. As soon as the lake ice melted, we heard the lonely cry of the moon, one of the wildest and most striking of all the wilderness sounds. A strange, sad, mournful, unearthly cry, half laughing, half wailing. Nevertheless, the great northern diver, as our species is called, is a brave, hearty, beautiful bird, able to fly underwater about as well as above it, and to spear and capture the swiftest fishes for food. Those that haunted our lake were so wary none was shot for years, though every boy-hunter in the neighborhood was ambitious to get one to prove his skill. On one of our bitter, cold, New Year holidays I was surprised to see a loon in the small, open part of the lake at the mouth of the inlet that was kept from freezing by the warm spring water. I knew that it could not fly out of so small a place, for these heavy birds have to beak the water for half a mile or so before they can get fairly on the wing. Their narrow, fin-like wings are very small as compared with the weight of the body, and are evidently made for flying through water as well as through the air, and it is by means of their swift flight through the water and the swiftness of the blow they strike with their long, spear-like bills that they are able to capture the fishes on which they feed. I ran down the meadow with the gun, got into my boat, and pursued that poor winter-brown straggler. Of course he dived again and again but had to come up to breathe, and I at length got a quick shot at his head and slightly wounded or stunned him, caught him, and ran proudly back to the house with my prize. I carried him in my arms. He didn't struggle to get away or offer to strike me, and when I put him on the floor in front of the kitchen-stove he just rested quietly on his belly, as noiseless and motionless as if he were a stuffed specimen on a shelf, held his neck erect, gave no sign of suffering from any wound, and though he was motionless, his small black eyes seemed to be ever keenly watchful. His formidable bill, very sharp, three or three and a half inches long and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly level, but the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest movement. We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old tome of great experience, who was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather that it was difficult even to poke him out with a broom. But when he saw and smelled that strange, big, fishy, black and white, speckledly bird, the like of which he had never before seen, he rushed wildly to the farther corner of the kitchen, looked back cautiously and suspiciously, and began to make a careful study of the handsome but dangerous-looking stranger. Becoming more and more curious and interested, he had linked advanced a step or two for a nearer view and nearer smell, and as the wonderful bird kept absolutely motionless, he was encouraged to venture gradually nearer and nearer until within perhaps five or six feet of its breast. Then the wary loon, not liking Tom's looks in so nearer view, which perhaps recalled to his mind the plundering minks and muskrats he had to fight when they approached his nest, prepared to defend himself by slowly, almost imperceptibly drawing back his long, pickaxe bill, and without the slightest fuss or stir, held it at level and ready just over his tail. With that dangerous bill drawn so far back out of the way, Tom's confidence in the stranger's peaceful intentions seemed almost complete, and thus encouraged he had last ventured forward with wondering, questioning eyes, and quivering nostrils until he was only eighteen or twenty inches from the loon's smooth white breast. When the beautiful bird, apparently as peaceful and inoffensive as a flower, saw that his hairy yellow enemy had arrived at the right distance, the loon, who evidently was a fine judge of the reach of his spear, shot it forward quick as a lightning flash in marvelous contrast to the wonderful slowness of the preparatory posing backward motion. The aim was true to a hair-breath. Tom was struck right in the center of his forehead between the eyes. I thought his skull was cracked. Perhaps it was. The sudden astonishment of that outraged cat, the virtuous indignation and wrath, terror, and pain are far beyond description. His eyes and screams and desperate retreat told all that. When the blow was received, he made a noise that I never heard a cat make before or since, an awfully deep, condensed, screechy, explosive hoot as he bounced straight up in the air like a bucking bronco. And when he alighted after his spring, he rushed madly across the room and made frantic efforts to climb up the hard finished plaster wall, not satisfied to get the width of the kitchen away from his mysterious enemy, for the first time that cold winter he tried to get out of the house, anyhow, anywhere out of that loon-infested room. When he finally ventured to look back and saw that the barbarous bird was still there, tranquil and motionless in front of the stove, he regained command of some of his shattered senses and carefully commenced to examine his wound. Backed against the wall in the farthest corner and keeping his eye on the outrageous bird, he tenderly touched and washed the sore spot, wetting his paw with his tongue, pausing now and then as his courage increased to glare and stare and growl at his enemy with looks and tones wonderfully human. As if saying, you confounded fishy, unfair rascal! What did you do that for? What had I done to you? Faithless, legless, long-nosed wretch! Intense experiences like the above bring out the humanity that is in all animals. One touch of nature, even a cat and loon-touch, makes all the world kin. It was a great memorable day when the first flock of passenger pigeons came to our farm, calling to mind the story we had read about them when we were at school in Scotland. Of all God's feathered people that sailed the Wisconsin sky, no other bird seemed to us so wonderful. The beautiful wanderers flew like the winds in flocks of millions from climate to climate in accord with the weather, finding their food, acorns, beech nuts, pine nuts, cranberries, strawberries, huckleberries, juniper berries, hackberries, buckwheat, rice, wheat, oats, corn, in fields and forests thousands of miles apart. I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing over from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, like a mighty river in the sky, widening, contracting, descending like falls and cataracts, and rising suddenly here and there in huge ragged masses, like high plashing spray, how wonderful the distances they flew in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. They arrived in Wisconsin in the spring, just after the sun had cleared away the snow, and alighted in the woods to feed on the fallen acorns that they had missed the previous autumn. A comparatively small flock swept thousands of acres perfectly clean of acorns in a few minutes by moving straight ahead with a broad front. All got their share for the rear constantly became the van by flying over the flock and alighting in front. The entire flock constantly changing from rear to front, revolving something like a wheel with a low, buzzing wing-war that could be heard a long way off. In summer they feasted on wheat and oats and were easily approached as they rested on the trees along the sides of the field after a good, full meal, displaying beautiful iridescent colors as they moved their necks backward and forward when we went very near them. Every shotgun was aimed at them and everybody feasted on pigeon pies, and not a few of the settlers feasted also on the beauty of the wonderful birds. The breast of the male is a fine, rosy red, the lower part of the neck behind and along the sides changing from the red of the breast to gold, emerald green, and rich crimson. The general color of the upper parts is grayish blue and the under parts white. The extreme length of the bird is about seventeen inches. The finely-modeled, slender tail about eight inches and extent of wings twenty-four inches. The females are scarcely less beautiful. Oh, what bonny, bonny birds we exclaimed over the first that fell into our hands. Oh, what colors! Look at their breasts, bonny as roses, and at their necks a glowin' with every color just like the wonderful wood-ducks. Oh, the bonny, bonny creatures! They'd beat up. Where did they come from? And where are they going? It's awful like a sin to kill them. To this some smug, practical old sinner would remark, Ah, it's a pity, as ye say, to kill the bonny things, but they were made to be killed, and sent for us to eat as the coils were sent to God's chosen people, the Israelites, when they were starving in the desert to yonk the Red Sea, and I must confess that meat was never put up in neater, handsomer-painted packages. In the New England and Canada Woods, beach-nuts were their best and most abundant food for the North Cranberries and Huckleberries. After everything was cleaned up in the North and winter was coming on, they went south for rice, corn, acorns, haws, wild grapes, crab-apples, sparkle-berries, et cetera. They seemed to require more than half of the continent for feeding grounds, moving from one table to another, field to field, forest to forest, finding something ripe and wholesome all the year round. In going south in the fine Indian summer weather they flew high and followed one another, though the head of the flock might be hundreds of miles in advance, but against headwinds they took advantage of the inequalities of the ground, flying comparatively low. All followed the leaders' ups and downs over hill and dale, though far out of sight, never hesitating at any turn of the way, vertical or horizontal, that the leaders had taken, though the largest flock stretched across several states and belts of different kinds of weather. There were no roosting or breeding places near our farm, and I never saw any of them until long after the great flocks were exterminated. I therefore quote from Audubon's and Pocogon's vivid descriptions. Towards evening Audubon says they depart for the roosting place, which may be hundreds of miles distant. One on the banks of Green River, Kentucky, was over three miles wide and forty long. My first view of it, says the great naturalist, was about a fortnight after it had been chosen by the birds, and I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. Few pigeons were then to be seen, but a great many persons with horses and wagons and armed with guns, long poles, sulfur pots, pine-pitched torches, et cetera, had already established encampments on the borders. Two farmers had driven upwards of three hundred hogs, a distance of more than a hundred miles, to be fattened on slaughtered pigeons. Here and there the people employed in plucking and salting what had already been secured were sitting in the midst of piles of birds. Dung several inches thick covered the ground. Many trees two feet in diameter were broken off at no great distance from the ground, and the branches of many of the tallest and largest had given way, as if the forest had been swept by a tornado. Not a pigeon had arrived at sundown. Suddenly a general cry arose, Here they come! The noise they made, though still distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close reefed ship. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. The birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a magnificent as well as terrifying sight presented itself. The pigeons pouring in alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses were formed on the branches all around. Here and there the perches gave way with a crash, and falling destroyed hundreds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick was loaded, a scene of uproar and conflict. I found it useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons nearest me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I was made aware of the firing only by seeing the shooters reloading. None dared venture within the line of devastation. The hogs had been penned up in due time, the picking up of the dead and wounded being left for the next morning's employment. The pigeons were constantly coming in, and it was after midnight before I perceived a decrease in the number of those that arrived. The uproar continued all night, and anxious to know how far the sound reached, I sent off a man who, returning two hours after, informed me that he had heard it distinctly three miles distant. Toward daylight the noise in some measures subsided. Long before objects were distinguishable, the pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that in which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all that were able to fly had disappeared. The howling of the wolves now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, coons, opossums, and polecats were seen sneaking off, while eagles and hawks of different species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, came to supplant them and enjoy a share of the spoil. From the authors of all this devastation began their entry amongst the dead, the dying, and mangled. The pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps until each had as many as they could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder. The breeding places are selected with reference to abundance of food and countless myriads resort to them. At this period the note of the pigeon is coo, coo, coo, like that of the domestic species, but much shorter. They caress by billing, and during incubation the male supplies the female with food. As the young grow the tyrant of creation appears to disturb the peaceful scene, armed with axes to chop down the squab-laden trees, and the abomination of desolation and destruction produced far surpasses even that of the roosting places. One an educated Indian writer says, I saw one nesting place in Wisconsin one hundred miles long and from three to ten miles wide. Every tree, some of them quite low and scrubby, had from one to fifty nests on each. Some of the nests overflow from the oaks to the hemlock and pine woods. When the pigeon hunters attack the breeding places they sometimes cut the timber from thousands of acres. Squoners are caught in nets with salt or grain for bait, and schooners sometimes loaded down with the birds are taken to New York where they are sold for a cent apiece.