University of Virginia Library

TOM OWEN, THE BEE-HUNTER.

As a country becomes cleared up and settled, bee-hunters
disappear, consequently they are seldom or never
noticed beyond the immediate vicinity of their homes.
Among this backwoods fraternity, have flourished men
of genius, in their way, who have died unwept and unnoticed,
while the heroes of the turf, and of the chase,
have been lauded to the skies for every trivial superiority,
they may have displayed in their respective pursuits.

To chronicle the exploits of sportsmen is commendable—the
custom began as early as the days of the antediluvians,
for we read, that “Nimrod was a mighty
hunter before the Lord.” Familiar, however, as Nimrod's
name may be—or even Davy Crockett's—how unsatisfactory
their records, when we reflect that Tom
Owen, the bee-hunter, is comparatively unknown?

Yes, the mighty Tom Owen has “hunted,” from the

time that he could stand alone until the present time,
and not a pen has inked paper to record his exploits.
“Solitary and alone” has he traced his game through
the mazy labyrinth of air; marked, I hunted;—I found;
—I conquered;—upon the carcasses of his victims, and
then marched homeward with his spoils: quietly and
satisfiedly, sweetening his path through life; and, by its
very obscurity, adding the principal element of the sublime.

It was on a beautiful southern October morning, at
the hospitable mansion of a friend, where I was staying
to drown dull care, that I first had the pleasure of seeing
Tom Owen.

He was, on this occasion, straggling up the rising
ground that led to the hospitable mansion of mine host,
and the difference between him and ordinary men was
visible at a glance; perhaps it showed itself as much in
the perfect contempt of fashion that he displayed in the
adornment of his outward man, as it did in the more elevated
qualities of his mind, which were visible in his
face. His head was adorned with an outlandish pattern
of a hat—his nether limbs were encased by a pair of
inexpressibles, beautifully fringed by the briar-bushes
through which they were often drawn; coats and vests,
he considered as superfluities; hanging upon his back
were a couple of pails, and an axe in his right hand,
formed the varieties that represented the corpus of Tom
Owen.

As is usual with great men, he had his followers,
who, with a courtier-like humility, depended upon the
expression of his face for all their hopes of success.

The usual salutations of meeting were sufficient to
draw me within the circle of his influence, and I at once
became one of his most ready followers.

“See yonder!” said Tom, stretching his long arm
into infinite space, “see yonder—there's a bee.”

We all looked in the direction he pointed, but that
was the extent of our observation.

“It was a fine bee,” continued Tom, “black body,
yellow legs, and went into that tree,”—pointing to a towering
oak, blue in the distance. “In a clear day I can
see a bee over a mile, easy!”

When did Coleridge “talk” like that? And yet
Tom Owen uttered such a saying with perfect ease.

After a variety of meanderings through the thick
woods, and clambering over fences, we came to our place
of destination, as pointed out by Tom, who selected a
mighty tree containing sweets, the possession of which
the poets have likened to other sweets that leave a sting
behind.

The felling of a mighty tree is a sight that calls up
a variety of emotions; and Tom's game was lodged in
one of the finest in the forest. But “the axe was laid
at the root of the tree,” which, in Tom's mind, was made
expressly for bees to build their nests in, that he might
cut them down, and obtain possession of their honeyed

treasure. The sharp axe, as it played in the hands of
Tom, was replied to by a stout negro from the opposite
side of the tree, and their united strokes fast gained
upon the heart of their lordly victim.

There was little poetry in the thought, that long
before this mighty empire of States was formed, Tom
Owen's “bee-hive” had stretched its brawny arms to the
winter's blast, and grown green in the summer's sun.

Yet such was the case, and how long I might have
moralized I know not, had not the enraged buzzing
about my ears satisfied me that the occupants of the tree
were not going to give up their home and treasure, without
showing considerable practical fight. No sooner had
the little insects satisfied themselves that they were
about to be invaded, than they began, one after another,
to descend from their airy abode, and fiercely pitch into
our faces; anon a small company, headed by an old veteran,
would charge with its entire force upon all parts
of our body at once.

It need not be said that the better part of valor was
displayed by a precipitate retreat from such attacks.

In the midst of this warfare, the tree began to tremble
with the fast-repeated strokes of the axe, and then
might have been seen a “bee-line” of stingers precipitating
themselves from above, on the unfortunate hunter
beneath.

Now it was that Tom shone forth in his glory, for
his partisans—like many hangers-on about great men,

began to desert him on the first symptoms of danger;
and when the trouble thickened, they, one and all, took
to their heels, and left only our hero and Sambo to
fight the adversaries. Sambo, however, soon dropped
his axe, and fell into all kinds of contortions; first he
would seize the back of his neck with his hands, then his
legs, and yell with pain. “Never holler till you get
out of the woods,” said the sublime Tom, consolingly;
but writhe the negro did, until he broke, and left Tom
“alone in his glory.”

Cut,—thwack! sounded through the confused hum
at the foot of the tree, marvellously reminding me of the
interruptions that occasionally broke in upon the otherwise
monotonous hours of my schoolboy days.

A sharp cracking finally told me the chopping was
done, and, looking aloft, I saw the mighty tree balancing
in the air. Slowly, and majestically, it bowed for
the first time towards its mother earth,—gaining velocity
as it descended, it shivered the trees that interrupted
its downward course, and falling with thundering
sound, splintered its mighty limbs, and buried them
deeply in the ground.

The sun, for the first time in at least two centuries,
broke uninterruptedly through the chasm made in the
forest, and shone with splendor upon the magnificent
Tom, standing a conqueror among his spoils.

As might be expected, the bees were very much
astonished and confused, and by their united voices proclaimed

death, had it been in their power, to all their
foes, not, of course, excepting Tom Owen himself. But
the wary hunter was up to the tricks of his trade, and,
like a politician, he knew how easily an enraged mob
could be quelled with smoke; and smoke he tried, until
his enemies were completely destroyed.

We, Tom's hangers-on, now approached his treasure.
It was a rich one, and, as he observed, “contained a
rich chance of plunder.” Nine feet, by measurement,
of the hollow of the tree was full, and this afforded
many pails of pure honey.

Tom was liberal, and supplied us all with more than
we wanted, and “toted,” by the assistance of Sambo,
his share to his own home, soon to be devoured, and
soon to be replaced by the destruction of another tree,
and another nation of bees.

Thus Tom exhibited within himself an unconquerable
genius which would have immortalized him, had he
directed it in following the sports of Long Island or
New Market.

We have seen the great men of the southern turf
glorying around the victories of their favorite sport,—
we have heard the great western hunters detail the soul-stirring
adventures of a bear-hunt—we have listened,
with almost suffocating interest, to the tale of a Nantucket
seaman, while he portrayed the death of a mighty
whale—and we have also seen Tom Owen triumphantly
engaged in a bee-hunt—we beheld and wondered at the

sports of the turf—the field—and the sea—because the
objects acted on by man were terrible, indeed, when
their instincts were aroused.

But, in the bee-hunt of Tom Owen, and its consummation,—the
grandeur visible was imparted by the
mighty mind of Tom Owen himself.