University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IX.

THE LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS.

While yet the sun in his westward journey had
but about an hour to go, before he left the Canaan
to darkness and the expedition—not to mention the
bears and owls, &c., about—a snake stole into our
bower, and disturbed the heavenly repose of the
glade. A very harmless, inoffensive little grasssnake—polished
and slippery, disturbed by the
rolling about of some one of the party, wound itself
along swiftly over one of the extended arms of
Doctor Blandy, as he lay sprawled out upon his
back—gazing up into the heavens, and dreaming
dreams of the balmy summer's eve. Galen sprang
to his feet, and jumped some ten paces off into the
meadow. Whereupon we all did the same. It was
a rattlesnake at least to our startled imagination!—
until we saw, to our shame, that it was not. Being
on our feet, however, the word was given to take
up the line of march again—and off we went:
the guides being of opinion, that by crossing the
ridge before us, we would come upon the Blackwater
by night.

We made our way out of the glade, encountering
but a small strip of laurel; and once more filed
into the dense wild forest. As we advanced we
grew more and more silent. We were evidently
beginning to flag in spirit. It was our first day,
and we were not yet inured to the toil. Every
now and then some startled deer would give a little
life to the party—but it would not last, and we
trudged along almost noiseless over the mossy
ground. Instead of the country's giving indication
of our being near a stream such as the Blackwater,
it was growing more hilly and broken ever since
we left the glade. The shades of evening too, were
fast closing in upon us. Something was wrong—
we ought certainly to have reached the Blackwater
before this. The hunters were evidently in doubt
about their course, and they now held frequent consultations
with each other. They had told us before
we set off from the dale of the Potomac, that they
would certainly take us to our destination by night,
and they were anxious to accomplish their purpose;
they feared their skill as guides would be called in
question if they failed in what they had been so
certain of accomplishing. It was now near sundown,
and we were hemmed in, on all sides, by
mountains. The impression that we were really
lost was uppermost in the minds of all of us; and
presently we held a general council—the result of
which was, that if we did not come to some indication

of the Blackwater, when we crossed the next
ridge, we would encamp for the night.

Crossing over this ridge, everything looked as
before. It was all the same rugged, dense, dark,
deep, grand gloom of mountainous forest that we
had left behind us—no appearance of laurel—the
sure harbinger of water; no such sloping down of
the hills anywhere, as looked like the descent into
a valley, such as a stream of any size would find its
way through; and above all, listen as intently as
we might, no sound of a waterfall (such as we were
assured would greet our ears from the river we
sought) was mingled with the song of the evening
wind. Therefore there was but one voice in the general
assembly of the expedition—and that was to
halt for the night, and take counsel of to-morrow's
sun as to our direction. Finding a little trickling
rill in the bed of a rugged ravine close at hand, we
resolved upon taking up our abode by its waters
for the night. Accordingly the most appropriate
spot we could find was selected; and, throwing
down our burdens in a pile, we commenced the
construction of a camp, with a great deal of busy
bustle. As the reader unacquainted with the ways
of a wilderness life, may take some interest in
knowing how this was done, we will enter, for his
benefit, into the particulars.

In the first place, then, the hunters set to work
and gathered together a number of dried logs and

limbs of trees, that they found scattered about the
forest, making a pile some ten or twelve feet long,
and three or four feet high. They then picked out
the driest bark and branches of pine they could
find, and laid them about through the pile. Next
they raised some fire by striking sparks from the
flints of their rifles into tow, and carefully applying
this to the pine bark and other combustible wood
they had gathered; it was not long before we had
our wood-pile in a blaze—which was soon increased
into a spreading and swelling flame, by the
young hemlocks and fir trees that we were busily
engaged for some time in cutting down and throwing
upon the pile.

While a part of the force were engaged in this
work, others were busy in arranging the camp.
The ground was cleared away in front of the fire,
and this place was covered over with the softest
branches of hemlock that we could gather—two
of the party being out cutting for the purpose. A
large log was brought and laid along the back of
the camp, and this was covered over to the height
of two or three feet with hemlock and fir branches,
serving as a sort of wall to protect us from any
intrusion from that side, of beasts, or what not, that
might be disposed to invade us during the night.
The camp was so arranged, that when we slept, our
heads would be against this barrier, and our feet to
the fire. The sides also were filled up between the

trees with branches. When it was all completed,
we had a tenement—a lodge in the wilderness—
the ground floor of which was hemlock branches a
foot deep, three sides, also, hemlock and fir, and
the fourth side a wood-pile, twelve feet long, four
feet high, and all afire. And the roof above us:—

and where will you find a grander in a king's palace.

Our rifles, bags of provisions, coffee-pot, tin-cups,
and frying-pan—all we had, were safely deposited
in one corner of the lodge. The wallets were unrolled,
and the blankets, great coats, &c., &c.—
including the knives and pistols, were thrown out
for use. Having cut down as many small trees as
would serve to keep the fire going for the night, we
now assembled in the camp, and commenced preparations
for supper, for which we were by this
time about as ravenous as the beasts of a menagerie
about feeding time. The bread, biscuits, and cold
ham, were brought forth. The sugar was untied.
Conway sat about preparing the coffee: Powell
started the frying-pan on the hot embers, and soon
had it hissing and crackling with the slices of fat
middling of bacon with which he filled it; until at
length the more delicate aroma of the hemlock was
lost to our noses, in the ascendency of the bacon-side.

Those of us who were not engaged in these enticing
preparations, were lying about on the hemlock,

enjoying ourselves in the abandonment of
forest undress—that is, in our stocking feet, with
ungirded vest, unsuspendered; and spread out
around, in all the various attitudes that it was possible
for a set of tired men to stretch themselves in.
At length the supper was announced as ready—
and then it was devoured. To say that it was
merely eaten up, would be a preposterous defamation
of any ideas of eating, such as the word generally
conveys in civilized life. In an exceeding
short space of time, of all the liberal preparation,
there were, at all events, no visible evidences remaining—except
the table-service—the tin and
the iron. It was as if a set of jugglers had suddenly
juggled it out of sight—caused it all to evanish.
It convinced my mind more thoroughly than anything
I have witnessed in my somewhat varied life
—that man is, by nature, a wild beast. Reduce
him into his original elements—take off all this
varnish, this overlarding of civilization—put him
out in the Canaan here for about a month, and
what beast is there of the wild that will out-raven
him! Poetry, philosophy, arts, and science—these
have humanized him; and made him, even when
he is most starved, wave his hand to his friend, and
with a smile upon his countenance, say, Take the
first grab, as did the famished Signor to the rapacious
Butcut—which made the yet unsatisfied
Blandy hand over the last slice of the middling to
lame Triptolemus, and belie himself, when he said,
Take that, Trip, I'm not a-hungry. The reader
will perceive, from this, that the wilderness had
not yet made us altogether savage; also he will
perceive though, that its tendency is toward the
dehumanization of man—the resolving him into
his original simple element of wild beast.

I would take advantage of this occasion—all the
great historians do so—to philosophize a little upon
the absolute necessity there is for good government
over mankind—that there should be good laws,
and firmly maintained—how stability and order,
and the social decorums, that make nations refined
and great, and keep them so, are thereby only upheld:
how otherwise, man will soon convert the
garden-spots of the world into a bear-walk. These
high corollaries I would deduce from our experience
of the wilderness, and go to the trouble of showing
them convincingly, with reasons manifold, were it
not, that just at this time there is a practical teaching
of them everywhere over the land, that is making
the lesson manifest to the dullest mind—and which
practical teaching, if not arrested, will soon convert
the garden of our American civilization into such a
bear-walk as the world has not yet seen.

Be these things, however, as they may—let the
republic tremble to its foundations, if it must—let
political and social anarchy take it, if it has to be
so—there are those about who will right it, and

rear its firm head higher, and higher yet, to the
skies. In the meantime, when the hurly-burly
comes, we of this expedition have made up our
minds to seize upon the Canaan; and with the
knowledge we have acquired of its fastnesses—
such as the laurel:—its gorges, narrow defiles,
rocky precipices, and torrent passes—all its military
availabilities—it will go hard with us if we
don't hold it against all the other freebooters of the
United States—let their name be legion!

However, upon this point we must keep our
counsel, or we might be frustrated in our enterprise
by the rapine of the times. A wise man is his own
lantern.

In the meantime, the supper was gone—juggled,
or jugged away; and the animals to all appearances
appeased. We now gathered into the inner
penetralia of our hold; and stowed ourselves away
in every violation of the rules of ceremony known
to any of the nations of Christendom, or of the
heathen—smoking cigars or pipes—telling stories,
and singing songs, of love, war, romance, the chase,
intermixed with our national anthems, and local
ballads, pathetic or humorous, now in the harmony
of Germany or of Italy, of France or old romantic
Spain, and now to the strains of some low, dulcet,
African refrain. Thus were passed the first watches
of the night, until, at length, tired nature yielded to
the omnipotence of sleep; and, hushed by the night

winds murmuring among the immemorial trees,
while the blazing pile at our feet illumined the
forest around and above us with its silver and

golden flame, imparting a magic sheen to the leaves
and branches of the woods, until it all seemed the
lighted tracery of some vast Gothic minster of the
wild; and with nothing above us but the vault of
heaven, studded with its glittering stars (which we
couldn't see)—and nothing beneath us but the
spicy smelling hemlock—and nothing over us but
a blanket—we fell asleep, as sweetly and confidingly
here in the wild, as children beneath the
roof-tree of some guardian home.

And so, tired reader, good night! May your
sleep be ever as safe in the city, and your dreams
never worse than those that haunted the hemlock
of our lost expedition.