 | THE WAYSIDE INN. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago |  |
1. THE WAYSIDE INN.
On a still clear October evening Frank Forester and Harry
Archer were sitting at the open window of a neat country tavern,
in a sequestered nook of Rockland County, looking out upon as
beautiful a view as ever gladdened the eyes of wandering amateur
or artist.
The house was a large old-fashioned stone mansion, certainly not
of later date than the commencement of the revolution; and probably
had been, in its better days, the manor-house of some considerable
proprietor—the windows were of a form very unusual in the
States, opening like doors, with heavy wooden mullions and small
lattices, while the walls were so thick as to form a deep embrasure,
provided with a cushioned window-seat; the parlor, in which
the friends had taken up their temporary domicile, contained two
of these pleasant lounges, the larger looking out due south upon
the little garden, with the road before it, and, beyond the road, a
prospect, of which more anon—the other commanding a space of
smooth green turf in front of the stables, whereon our old acquaintance,
Timothy, was leading to and fro a pair of smoking
horses. The dark-green drag, with all its winter furniture of gaily
decorated bear-skins, stood half-seen beneath the low-arched wagonshed.
The walls of the room—the best room of the tavern—were pannelled
with the dark glossy wood of the black cherry, and a huge
mantel-piece of the same material, took up at least one half of the
side opposite the larger window, while on the hearth below reposed
a glowing bed of red-hot hickory ashes a foot at least in depth, a
huge log of that glorious fuel blazing upon the massive andirons.
Two large deep gun-cases, a leathern magazine of shot, and sundry
canisters of diamond gunpowder, Brough's, were displayed on a
long table under the end window—a four-horse whip, and two fly-rods
in India-rubber cases, stood in the chimney-corner; while
on the rug, three exquisitely formed Blenheim spaniels of the large
breed—short-legged and bony, with ears that almost swept the
ground as they stood upright, and coats as soft and lustrous as
floss silk.
On a round table, which should have occupied the centre of the
parlor, now pulled up to the window-seat, whereon reclined the
worthies, stood a large pitcher of iced water; a square case-bottle
of cut crystal filled, as the flavor which pervaded the whole
room sufficiently demonstrated, with superb old Antigua Shrub;
several large rummers corresponding to the fashion of the bottle;
a twisted taper of green wax, and a small silver plate with six or
eight cheroots, real manillas.
Supper was evidently over, and the friends, amply feasted, were
now luxuriating in the delicious indolence, half-dozing, half-day-dreaming,
of a calm sleepy smoke, modestly lubricated by an occasional
sip of the cool beverage before them. If we except a pile of
box-coats, capes, and macintoshes of every cut and color—a travelling
liquor-case which, standing open, displayed the tops of three
more bottles similar to that on the table, and spaces lined with velvet
for all the glass in use—and another little leathern box, which,
like the liquor-case, showed its contents of several silver plates,
knives, forks, spoons, flasks of sauce, and condiments of different
kinds—the whole interior, as a painter would have called it, has
been depicted with all accuracy.
Without, the view on which the windows opened was indeed
most lovely. The day had been very bright and calm; there was
not a single cloud in the pale transparent heaven, and the sun,
which had shone cheerfully all day from his first rising in the east,
till now when he was hanging like a ball of bloody fire in the thin
filmy haze which curtained the horizon, was still shooting his long
rays, and casting many a shadow over the slopes and hollows which
diversified the scene.
Immediately across the road lay a rich velvet meadow, luxuriant
still and green—for the preceding month had been rather wet, and
frost had not set in to nip its verdure—sloping down southerly to a
broad shallow trout-stream, which rippled all glittering and bright
over a pebbly bed, although the margin on the hither side was
somewhat swampy, with tufts of willows and bushes of dark alder
fringing it here and there, and dipping their branches in its waters
—the farther bank was skirted by a tall grove of maple, hickory,
and oak, with a thick undergrowth of sumach arrayed in all the
gorgeous garniture of autumn, purples and brilliant scarlets and
chrome yellows, mixed up and harmonized with the dark copper
foliage of a few sere beeches, and the gray trunks apparent here
and there through the thin screen of the fast-falling leaves.
Beyond this grove, the bank rose bold and rich in swelling curves,
with a fine corn-field, topped already to admit every sunbeam to
the ripening ears. A buckwheat stubble, conspicuous by its deep
ruddy hue, and two or three brown pastures divided by high fences,
and sumachs, with here and there a goodly tree waving above
them, made up the centre of the picture. Beyond this cultured
knoll there seemed to be a deep pitch of the land clothed with a
hanging wood of heavy timber; and, above this again, the soil
surged upward into a huge and round-topped hill, with several
golden stubbles, shining out from the frame-work of primeval forest,
which, dark with many a mighty pine, covered the mountain to the
top, except where at its western edge it showed a huge and rifted
precipice of rock.
To the right, looking down the stream, the hills closed in quite
to the water's brink on the far side, rough and uncultivated, with
many a blue and misty peak discovered through the gaps in their
bold broken outline, and a broad lake-like sheet, as calm and brightly
pictured as a mirror, reflecting their inverted beauties so wondrously
distinct and vivid, that the amazed eye might not recognize the
parting between reality and shadow. An old gray mill deeply embosomed
in a clump of weeping willows, still verdant, though the
woods were sere and waxing leafless, explained the nature of that
tranquil pool, while, beyond that, the hills swept down from the rear
of the building, which contained the parlor whence the two sportsmen
gazed, and seemed entirely to bar the valley, so suddenly, and
in so short a curve, did it wind round their western shoulder. To
the left hand, the view was closed by a thick belt of second growth,
through which the sandy road and glittering stream wandered
away together on their mazy path, and over which the summits of
yet loftier and more rugged steeps towered heavenward.
Over this valley they had for some time gazed in silence, till
now the broad sun sank behind the mountains, and the shrill whistle
of the quail, which had been momently audible during the whole
afternoon, ceased suddenly; four or five night-hawks might be
seen wheeling high in pursuit of their insect prey through the thin
atmosphere, and the sharp chirrup of a solitary katydid, the last of
its summer tribe, was the only sound that interrupted the faint rush
of the rapid stream, which came more clearly on the ear now that
the louder noises of busy babbling daylight had yielded to the stillness
of approaching night. Before long a bright gleam shot through
the tufted outline of a dark wooded hill, and shortly after, just when
a gray and misty shadow had settled down upon the half-seen land-scape,
the broad full moon came soaring up above the tree-tops,
pouring her soft and silver radiance over the lovely valley, and investing
its rare beauties with something of romance—a sentiment
which belongs not to the gay gaudy sunshine.
Just at this moment, while neither of the friends felt much inclined
to talk, the door opened suddenly, and Timothy's black
head was thrust in, with a query if “they did n't need t' waax
candles?”
“Not yet, Tim,” answered Archer, “not yet for an hour or so—
but hold a minute—how have the horses fed?”
“T' ould gray drayed off directly, and he's gane tull t' loike
for iver—and sae Ay'se give him a hot maash enow!”
That's right. I saw he wasn't quite up to the mark the last
ten miles or so. If he don't dry off now, give him a cordial ball
out of the tool-chest—one of the number 3—camphire and cardamums
and ginger; a clove of garlic, and treacle quantum suff:
hey, Frank, that will set him to rights, I warrant it. Now have
you dined yourself, or supped, as the good people here insist on
calling it?”
“Weel Ay wot, have I, Sur,” responded Timothy; “an hour
agone and better.”
“Exactly; then step out yourself into the kitchen, and make us
a good cup of our own coffee, strong and hot, do you see? and
when that's done, bring it in with the candles; and, hark you, run
up to the bed-room and bring my netting needles down, and the
ball of silk twist, and the front of that new game-bag, I began the
other night. If you were not as lazy as possible, friend Frank,
you would bring your fly-book out, when the light comes, and tie
some hackles.”
“Perhaps I may, when the light comes,” Forester answered;
“but I'm in no hurry for it; I like of all things to look out, and
watch the changes of the night over a landscape even less beautiful
than this. One half the pleasure of field sports to me, is other
than the mere excitement. If there were nothing but the eagerness
of the pursuit, and the gratification of successful vanity, fond as I
am of shooting, I should, I believe, have long since wearied of it;
but there are so many other things connected intimately with it—
the wandering among the loveliest scenery—the full enjoyment
of the sweetest weather—the learning the innumerable and all-wondrous
attributes and instincts of animated nature—all these are
what make up to me the rapture I derive from woodcraft! Why,
such a scene as this—a scene which how few, save the vagrant
sportsman, or the countryman who but rarely appreciates the picturesque,
have ever witnessed—is enough, with the pure and tranquil
thoughts it calls up in the heart, to plead a trumpet-tongued
apology, for all the vanity, and uselessness, and cruelty, and what
not, so constantly alleged against our field sports.”
“Oh! yes,” cried Harry; “yes, indeed, Frank, I perfectly
agree with you. But all that last is mere humbug—humbug, too, of
the lowest and most foolish order—I never hear a man droning
about the cruelty of field sports, but I set him down, on the spot,
either as a hypocrite or a fool, and probably a glorious union of
the two. When man can exist without killing myriads of animals
with every breath of vital air he draws, with every draught of
water he imbibes, with every footstep he prints upon the turf or
gravel of his garden—when he abstains from every sort of animal
food—and, above all, when he abstains from his great pursuit of
torturing his fellow men—then let him prate, if he will, of sportsmen's
cruelty.
“For show me one trade, one profession, wherein one man's success
triumph and rapture to the winner, disgrace and anguish to the
loser! And then these fellows, fattened on widows' tears and orphans'
misery, preach you pure homilies about the cruelty of taking
life. But you are quite right about the combination of pleasures—
the excitement, too, of quick motion through the fresh air—the
sense of liberty amid wide plains, or tangled woods, or on the wild
hill tops—this, surely, to the reflective sportsman—and who can
be a true sportsman, and not reflective—is the great charm of his
pursuit.”
“And do you not think that this pleasure exists in a higher degree
here in America, than in our own England?”
“As how, Frank?—I don't take.”
“Why, in the greater, I will not say beauty—for I don't think
there is greater natural beauty in the general landscape of the
States—but novelty and wildness of the scenery! Even the
richest and most cultivated tracts of America, that I have seen,
except the Western part of New York, which is unquestionably
the ugliest, and dullest, and most unpoetical region on earth, have
a young untamed freshness about them, which you do not find in
England.
“In the middle of the high-tilled and fertile cornfield you come upon
some sudden hollow, tangled with brake and bush which hedge in
some small pool where float the brilliant cups and smooth leaves of
the water lily, and whence on your approach up-springs the blue-winged
teal, or gorgeous wood-duck. Then the long sweeping
woodlands, embracing in themselves every variety of ground, deep
marshy swamp, and fertile level thick-set with giant timber, and
sandy barrens with their scrubby undergrowth, and difficult rocky
steeps; and above all, the seeming and comparative solitude—the
dinner carried along with you and eaten under the shady tree, beside
the bubbling basin of some spring—all this is vastly more exciting,
than walking through trim stubbles and rich turnip fields,
and lunching on bread and cheese and home-brewed, in a snug farm-house.
In short, field sports here have a richer range, are much
more various, wilder—”
“Hold there, Frank; hold hard there, I cannot concede the
wilder, not the really wilder—seemingly they are wilder; for, as
you say, the scenery is wilder—and all the game, with the exception
of the English snipe, being wood-haunters, you are led into
rougher districts. But oh! no, no!—the field sports are not really
wilder—in the Atlantic States at least—nor half so wild as those
of England!”
“I should like to hear you prove that, Archer,” answered Frank,
“for I am constantly beset with the superiority of American field
sports to tame English preserve shooting!”
“Pooh! pooh! that is only by people who know nothing about
either; by people, who fancy that a preserve means a park full of
tame birds, instead of a range, perhaps, of many thousand acres, of
the very wildest, barest moorland, stocked with the wariest and
say, is this, that every English game-bird—to use an American
phrase—is warier and wilder than its compeer in the United States.
Who, for instance, ever saw in England, Ireland, or Scotland,
eighteen or twenty snipe or woodcock, lying within a space of
twelve yards square, two or three dogs pointing in the midst of
them, and the birds rising one by one, the gunshots rattling over
them, till ten or twelve are on the ground before there is time to
bag one.
“English partridge will, I grant, do this sometimes, on very warm
days in September; but let a man go out with his heavy gun and
steady dog late in December, or the month preceding it, let him
see thirty or more covies—as on good ground he may—let him see
every covey rise at a hundred yards, and fly a mile; let him be
proud and glad to bag his three or four brace; and then tell me
that there is any sport in these Atlantic States so wild as English
winter field-shooting.
“Of grouse shooting on the bare hills, which, by the way, are
wilder, more solitary far, and more aloof from the abodes of men,
than any thing between Boston and the Green Bay, I do not of
course speak; as it confessedly is the most wild and difficult kind of
shooting.
“Still less of deer stalking—for Scrope's book has been read
largely even here; and no man, how prejudiced soever, can compare
the standing at a deer-path all day long, waiting till a great
timid beast is driven up within ten yards of your muzzle, with that
extraordinary sport on bald and barren mountains, where nothing
but vast and muscular exertion, the eye of the eagle, and the cunning
of the serpent, can bring you within range of the wild cattle
of the hills.
“Battue shooting, I grant, is tame work; but partridge shooting,
after the middle of October, is infinitely wilder, requiring more exertion
and more toil than quail shooting. Even the pheasant—the
tamest of our English game—is infinitely bolder on the wing than
the ruffed grouse, or New York partridge; while about snipe and
woodcock there exists no comparison—since by my own observation,
confirmed by the opinion of old sportsmen, I am convinced that
nine-tenths of the snipe and cock bagged in the States, are killed
between fifteen and twenty paces; while, I can safely say, I never
saw a full snipe rise in England within that average distance.
Quail even, the hardest bird to kill, the swiftest and the boldest on
the wing, are very rarely killed further than twenty-five to thirty,
whereas you may shoot from daylight to sunset in England, after
October, and not pick up a single partridge within the farthest, as
a minimum distance.”
“Well! that's all true, I grant,” said Forester “yet even you
allow that it is harder to kill game here than at home; and if I do
not err, I have heard you admit that the best shot in all England
could be beat easily by the crack shots on this side; how does all
this agree!”
“Why very easily, I think,” Harry replied, “though to the last
remark, I added in his first season here! Now that American field
sports are wilder in one sense, I grant readily; with the exception
of snipe-shooting here, and grouse-shooting in Scotland, the former
being tamer, in all senses, than any English—the latter wilder in
all senses than any American—field-sport.
“American sporting, however, is certainly wilder, in so much as
it is pursued on much wilder ground; in so much as we have a
greater variety of game—and in so much as we have many more
snap shots, and fewer fair dead points.
“Harder it is, I grant; for it is all, with scarcely an exception,
followed in very thick and heavy covert—covert to which the thickest
woods I ever saw in England are but as open ground. Moreover,
the woods are so very large that the gun must be close up
with the dog; and consequently the shots must, half of them, be
fired in attitudes most awkward, and in ground which would, I
think, at home, be generally styled impracticable; thirdly, all the
summer shooting here is made with the leaf on—with these
thick tangled matted swamps clad in the thickest foliage.
“Your dogs must beat within twenty yards at farthest, and when
they stand you are aware of the fact rather by ceasing to hear their
motion, than by seeing them at point; I am satisfied that of six
pointed shots in summer shooting, three at the least must be treated
as snap shots! Many birds must be shot at—and many are killed—
which are never seen at all, till they are bagged; and many men
here will kill three out of four summer woodcock, day in and day
out, where an English sportsman, however crack a shot he might
be, would give the thing up in despair in half an hour.
“Practice, however, soon brings this all to rights. The first
season I shot here—I was a very fair, indeed a good, young shot,
when I came out hither—not at all crack, but decidedly better than
the common run!—the first day I shot was on 4th of July, 1832, the
place Seer's swamp, the open end of it; the witness old Tom Draw
—and there I missed, in what we now call open covert, fourteen
birds running; and left the place in despair—I could not, though I
missed at home by shooting too quick—I could not, for the life of
me, shoot quick enough. Even you, Frank, shoot three times as
well as you did, when you began here; yet you began in autumn,
which is decidedly a great advantage, and came on by degrees, so
that the following summer you were not so much nonplussed,
though I remember the first day or two, you bitched it badly.”
“Well, I believe I must knock under, Harry,” Forester answered;
“and here comes Timothy with the coffee, and so we will
to bed, that taken, though I do want to argufy with you, on some of
your other notions about dogs, scent, and so forth. But do you
think the Commodore will join us here to-morrow?”
“No! I don't think so,” Harry said, “I know it! Did not he
arrive in New York last first of July, from a yachting tour at four
o'clock in the afternoon; receive my note saying that I was off to
Tom's that morning; and start by the Highlander at five that evening?
through, and find me just sitting down to breakfast, and change his
toggery, and out, and walk all day—like a trump as he is? And
did not we, by the same token, bag—besides twenty-five more
killed that we could not find—one hundred and fifteen cock between
ten o'clock and sunset; while you, you false deceiver, were kicking
up your heels in Buffalo? Is not all this a true bill, and have you
now the impudence to ask me whether I think the Commodore will
come? I only wish I was as sure of a day's sport to-morrow, as I
am of his being to the fore at luncheon time?”
“At luncheon time, hey? I did not know that you looked for
him so early! Will he be in time, then, for the afternoon's shooting?”
“Why, certainly he will,” returned Archer. “The wind has
been fair up the river all day long, though it has been but light;
and the Ianthe will run up before it like a race-horse. I should not
be much surprised if he were here to breakfast.”
“And that we may be up in time for him, if perchance he should,
let us to bed forthwith,” said Frank with a heavy yawn.
“I am content,” answered Harry, finishing his cup of coffee, and
flinging the stump of his cheroot into the fire. “Goodnight!
Timothy will call you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, old fellow.”
And the friends parted merrily, in prospect of a pleasant day's
sport on the morrow.
| THE WAYSIDE INN. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago | |