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
ever noticed. 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 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, what does it amount to, when
we reflect that Tom Owen, the bee-hunter, is comparatively
unknown?

Yes, the mighty Tom Owen has “hunted” from
the time 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 straggling on
this occasion 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 he displayed in the adornment
of his outward man, as it did in the more elevated
qualities of his mind that were visible in his
face. His head was adorned with an outlandish
pattern of a hat—his nether limbs were ensconced in
a pair of inexpressibles, beautifully fringed by the
brier-bushes through which they were often drawn;
coats and vests he considered as superfluities; and
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, and with a
courtier-like humility they 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 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 whose trunk contained the
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
thereof. The sharp sounds of the axe as it played
in the hands of Tom, and was replied to by a stout
negro from the opposite side, by the rapidity of their
strokes fast gained upon the heart of the lordly sacrifice.
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 valour 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-hive of stingers
precipitating themselves from above on the unfortunate
hunter beneath. Now it was that Tom shone
forth in his glory.

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 their 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 shins, and yell with
pain. “Don't holler, nigger, till you get out of the
woods,” said the sublime Tom, consolingly; but
writhe he 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 school-boy 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, shivering the trees that
interrupted its downward course, and falling with
thundering sound, splintering its mighty limbs and
burying 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 splendour 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
they 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 this 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 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 Colonel Bingaman, the Napoleon of
the southern turf, glorying amid the victories of his
favourite sport,—we have heard the great Crockett
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 the 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 Tom Owen
and its consummation, the grandeur visible was imparted
by the mighty mind of Tom Owen himself.