University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Our party reached the rendezvous only a few hours beyond
the appointed time. Here, as a bee-tree had been
just reported, it was unanimously determined to commemorate
the deliverance and safe arrival of our three friends by
a special jollification. In other words, it was voted to obtain
the wild honey; and then, in a compound of honey,
water and whiskey, to toast our undrowned heroes and their
presence of mind and bravery:—no small honour, if the
trouble of getting the honey is considered. For, on following
the aerial trail of the bees, the hive was ascertained to
be in a hollow limb of the largest patriarchal sire of the
forest—a tree more than thirty feet in circumference! and
requiring six men at least, touching each other's hands,
to encircle the trunk!

And this is a fair chance to say a word about the enormous
circumambitudialitariness (!) of many western trees.
It is common to find such from six to seven feet in diameter;
and we have more than once sat on stumps and measured
across three lengths of my cane, nearly ten feet; and
found, on counting the concentric circles, that these monsters
must have been from seven to eight hundred years
old—an age greater than Noah's, and almost as venerable
as that of Methusaleh! Shall we feel no sublimity in walking

amid and around such ancients?—trees that have tossed
their branches in the sun light and winds of eight centuries!
—that have scorned the tempests and tornadoes, whose fury
ages ago prostrated cities and engulfed navies!—that have
sheltered wildfowl in their leaves, and hid wild beasts in
their caverns from the dooms-day looking gloom of many
total solar eclipses! and have gleamed in the disastrous
light of comets returning in the rounds of centennary cycles!

Such trees, but for the insidious and graceless axe, that
in its powerlessness begged a small handle of the generous
woods, such would yet stand for other centuries to come, at
least decaying, if not growing: they are herculean even in
weakness and dying! And dare finical European tourists
say we have no antiquity? Poor souls!—poor souls!—our
trees were fit for navies, long years before their old things
existed! Ay, when their oldest castles and cities were
unwrought rock and unburnt clay! Our trees belong to the
era of Egyptian architecture—they are coeval with the pyramids!

Near the junction of the White River of Indiana and the
Wabash, stands a sycamore fully ninety feet in circumference!
Within its hollow can be stabled a dozen horses;
and if a person stand in the centre of the ground circle, and
hold in his hand the middle of a pole fifteen feet long, he
may twirl that pole as he pleases, and yet touch no part of
the inner tree! He may, as did Bishop Hilsbury, mounted
on a horse, ride in at a natural opening, canter round the
area, and trot forth to the world again! But to the bee-tree.

It is a proverb, “He that would eat the fruit must first
climb the tree and get it:” but when that fruit is honey,
he that wants it must first cut the tree down. And that was
the present necessity. No sooner was this resolved, however,
than preparation was made for execution; and instantly

six sturdy fellows stood with axes, ready for the work of
destruction. They were all divested of garments excepting
shirts and trowsers; and now, with arms bared to the
shoulders, they took distances around the stupendous tree.
Then the leader of the band, glancing an eye to see if his
neighbour was ready, stepped lightly forward with one leg,
and swinging his weapon, a la Tom Robison, he struck;
and the startled echoes from the “tall timber” of the dark
dens, were telling each other that the centuries of a wood-monarch
were numbered! That blow was the signal for
the next axe, and its stroke for the next; till cut after cut
brought it to the leader's second blow: and thus was completed
the circle of rude harmony; while the lonely cliffs of
the farther shores, and the grim forests on this, were repeating
to one another the endless and regular notes of the six
death-dealing axes! And never before had the music of
six axes so rung out to enliven the grand solitudes!—and a
smaller number was not worthy to bid such a tree fall!

Long was it, however, before the tree gave even the
slightest symptom of alarm. What had it cared for the
notchings of a hundred blows! Yet chip after chip had
leaped from the wounded body—each a block of solid wood
—and the keen iron teeth were beginning to gnaw upon the
vitals! Alas! oh! noble tree, you tremble! Ah! it is not
the deep and accustomed thunder of the heavens, that shakes
you now!—no mighty quaking of the earth! That is a
strange shivering—it is the chill shivering of death! But
what does death mean where existence was deemed immortal!
Why are those topmost branches, away off towards
the blue heavens, so agitated! Tree!—tree!—no wind
stirs them so—they incline towards the earth—away! hunters,
away! away! Hark!—the mighty heart is breaking!
And now onward and downward rushes you broad expanse
of top, with the cataract roar of eddying whirlwinds; and
the far-reaching arms have caught the strong and stately

trees; and all are hurrying and leaping and whirling to the
earth, in tempest and fury! Their fall is heard not! In
the overwhelming thunder of that quivering trunk, and the
thousand crushings of those giant limbs, and the deep groan
of the earth, are lost all other noises, as the slight crack of
our rifles amid the sudden bursting of the electric cloud!
There lies the growth of ages! Once more the sun pours
the tide of all his rays over an acre of virgin soil, barely
discerned by him for centuries!

Well might Glenville feel rewarded and honoured, when
for his sake such a tree lay prostrate at his feet! And yet
in all this was fulfilled the saying,—the sublime and ridiculous
are separated by narrow limits; for, could any thing
be grander than such a tree and such an overthrow? Could
any be meaner than the purpose for which it fell?—viz:—
To get a gallon of honey to sweeten a keg of whiskey!