University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Once more in the green wilderness! Welcome the wild
scenes of our boyhood, which, as the checkered panorama of
the past is unrolled at our bidding, rise on the mental vision
in all their original freshness and beauty! It was here we
first essayed to study the works of nature, and in them trace
the Master-hand that moulded and perfected them. It was
here we learned to recognize the voice of God in the rolling
thunder, and his messengers in the swift-winged lightnings; to
mark the forms of beauty and grandeur in every thing, from
the humble lichen of the logs and rocks, to the high and towering
pine of the plain and the mountain, — from the low murmurings
of the quiet rivulet, to the loud thunderings of the
headlong cataract, — and from the soft whisperings of the gentle
breeze, to the angry roar of the desolating tornado; and,
finally, it was here that our first and most enduring lessons of
devotion were learned, here that our first and truest conceptions
of the grand and beautiful were acquired, and here that
the leading tone of our intellectual character, such as it may
be, was generated and stamped on us for life.

The second part of our story, to which the preceding chapters
should be taken, perhaps, as merely introductory, opens about
midsummer, and among that remarkable group of sylvan lakes
— nearly a dozen in number — which, commencing on the
wild borders of northerly New Hampshire, and shooting off
in an irregular line some fifty miles northeasterly into the

dark and unbroken forests of Maine, appear on the map, in
their strangely shapeless forms and scattered locations, as if
they must have been hurled, by the hand of some Borean
giant, down from the North Pole in a volley of huge ice-blocks,
which fell and melted where they now lie, sparkling, like rough
gems, on the shaggy bosom of the wilderness.

Near the centre of an opening of perhaps a dozen acres,
about a mile from where the sinuous Androscoggin debouches
full grown, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, from its
parent reservoir, the picturesque Umbagog, stood a newly
rigged log house, of dimensions and finish which indicated more
taste and enterprise than is usually exhibited in the rude habitations
of the first settlers. It was a story and a half high,
and the walls were built of solid pine timber, originally roughly
hewed, but recently dressed down with broad axe over the
whole outward and inner surfaces so smoothly that, at a little
distance, they presented, with their still visible seams, more the
appearance of the wainscoting of some costly cottage than
the humble log cabin. The building had also been newly
shingled, new doors supplied, the windows enlarged, the yard
around leveled off, with other improvements, of a late date,
betokening considerable ambition for appearance, and considerable
outlay of means, for so new a place, to fit up a tidy
and comfortable abode for the occupants. In the surrounding
field were patches of growing maize, wheat, potatoes, and some
of the common table vegetables; the hay crop for the winter
sustenance of the only cow and yoke of oxen, the best friends
of the new settler, having been just cut and stored in an adjoining
log-building, as was evident from the fresh look of the
stubble, and the stray straws hanging to the slivered stumps or
bushes in the field, and from the fragrant and far-scenting locks
protruding from the upper and lower windows of the well-crammed
receptacle passing under the name of barn. Beyond
this little opening, and bounding it on every side, stood the encircling
wall of woods, through and over which gleamed the

bright waters of the far-spreading Umbagog on the north;
while all around, towering up in their green glories, rose, one
above another, the amphitheatric hills, till their lessening individual
forms were lost, or mingled in the vision with the
lofty summits of the distant White Mountains in the south and
west, and of the bold detached eminences which shot up from
the dark wilderness and studded the horizon in all other directions.

Such, and in such a locality, was, as the reader probably has
already inferred, the residence which Mark Elwood had pitched
upon for beginning life anew. On leaving the city, as represented
in the last chapter, he had, under the goading remembrance
of follies left behind, and the incitements of hope-constructed
prospects before, perseveringly pushed on, till he
reached this lone and wild terminus of civilized life; when,
finding, a mile beyond the last of the scattered settlements of
the vicinity, a place on which an opening had been made and
the walls and roof of a spacious log house erected, the year
before, he had succeeded in purchasing it, for ready money, at
a price which was much below its value, and which left him
nearly half his little fund to be expended in more thoroughly
clearing the land, getting in crops, making the house habitable,
and felling an additional tract of forest. And with so much
energy and resolution had he pursued his object of seeing himself
and family once more united at a comfortable home, that,
within three months from the time he commenced operations,
which was in the first of the spring months, he had accomplished
it all; for his wife and son, rejoicing in the knowledge
of his success which he had communicated to them, and
promptly responding to his invitation to join him, had come on,
with their little all of goods and money, in teams hired for the
purpose; and they were now all together fully installed in their
new home, pleased with the novelty and freshness of every
thing around them, proud and secure in their conscious independence
and exemption from the dangers and trials they had

recently passed through, and contented and happy in their
situation.

The particular time we have taken for the reäppearance of
the family on this, their new stage of action, was a warm but
breezy afternoon on one of the last days of July. Elwood
was engaged in his new-mown field, in cutting and grubbing up
the bushes and sprouts which had sprung up during the season
around the log-heaps and stumps, and could not easily or conveniently
be cut by the common scythe while mowing the
grass. He was no longer robed in the broadcloth and fine
linen, in which, as the rich merchant, he might have been
seen, perhaps, one year ago that day, sauntering about “on
'change” among the solid men of Boston. These had been
mostly worn out or sold during the changing fortunes of the
year, and their place was now wisely supplied by the long tow-frock
and the other coarse garments in common use among the
settlers. Nor had his physical appearance undergone a much
less change. Instead of the pallid brow, leaden eye, fleshly
look, and the red cheek of the wine-bibber and luxurist of the
cities, he exhibited the embrowned, thin, but firm and healthy
face, and the clear and cheerful complexion of the contented
laborer of the country, — tell-tale looks both, which we always
encounter with as much secret disgust in the former as we do
with involuntary respect in the latter. He now paused in his
labors, and stood for some time looking about the horizon, as if
watching the signs of the weather; now noting the progress of
the haze gathering in the south, and now turning his cheek
first one way and then another, apparently to ascertain the
doubtful direction of the wind, which, from a lively western
breeze, had within the last hour lulled down into those small,
fluctuating puffs usually observable when counter-currents are
springing up, balancing, and beginning to strive for the mastery.
After a while he moved slowly towards the house, continuing
his observations as he went, till he came near the open window
at which Mrs. Elwood was sitting at her needle-work, from

which she occasionally lifted her eyes, and glanced somewhat
anxiously along the path leading down through the woods to a
landing-place on the lake; when, looking round and observing
her husband standing near, giving token of being about to speak,
she interposed and said:

“You have seen nothing of Claud, I suppose? What can
be the reason why he does not return? He was to have been
at home long before this, was he not?”

“Yes,” carelessly replied Elwood, “unless he concluded to
take a bout in the woods. He took his fowling-piece with him,
to use in case the trout wouldn't bite, you know. Phillips, the
old hunter, came into the field where we were last night, and
said he was out of meat, and must skirt the lake to-day for a
buck. I presume Claud may have joined him. There! hark!
that sounded like Claud's piece,” he added, as the distant report
of a gun rose from the woods westward of the lake and died
away in swelling echoes on the opposite shore. “And there,
again!” he continued, as another and sharper report burst, the
next moment, from the same locality, — “there goes another,
but not his, as he could not have loaded so quick. That must
have been Phillips' long rifle. They are doubtless together
somewhere near the Magalloway, — some three miles distant, I
should judge, — and are probably having fine sport with something.”

“That may be the case, perhaps,” responded Mrs. Elwood.
“I wish, however, he would come; for I cannot yet quite divest
myself of the idea that there may be danger in these wild scenes
of the lakes and the woods. But what was you about to say
when I first spoke? You were going to say something, I
thought.”

“O — yes — why, I was about to say that I had made up
my mind to set fire to the slash. It is dry enough now to get a
good burn; and it looks to me a good deal like rain. I wish
to get the land cleared and ready to sow with winter wheat by

the first of September; and I don't like to risk the chance of
finding every thing in so good order again.”

“There is no danger that the fire will spread, or be blown
to the buildings, is there?”

“No, the wind is springing up in the south now, and will
drive the fire only towards the lake in the direction of the
landing.”

“But Claud may be there.”

“Well, if he should be, the fire won't burn up the lake, I
think; and, if it besets the path in the woods, he can come round
some other way,” jocosely said Elwood, moving away to carry
his purpose into execution.

Having procured a parcel of splinters split from the dry and
resinous roots of some old pine stub, — that never-failing and
by no means contemptible substitute for lamp or candle among
the pioneers of a pine-growing country, — he proceeded rapidly
to the edge of the slash, as a tract of felled forest is generally
denominated by the first settlers, especially of the northern
States. Here, pausing a moment to mark with his eye the
most favorable places to communicate the fire, he picked his
way along the southern end to the farthest side of the tangled
mass of trees of every description composing the slash, which
was a piece of some four or five acres, lying on the western
border and extending north and south the whole length of the
opening. And, having reached his destination, and kindled all
his splinters into a blaze, he threw one of them into the thickest
nest of pine or other evergreen boughs at hand, and darted back
to his next marked station, where he threw in another of his
blazing torches, and so on till he reached the cleared ground,
which was not one moment too soon for his safety. For so
dry and inflammable had every thing there become, under the
scorching sun of the preceding fortnight, which had been relieved
by neither rain nor cloud, that, the instant the fire touched
the tinder-like leaves, it flashed up as from a parcel of scattered
gunpowder; and, bursting with almost explosive quickness all

around, and swiftly leaping from bough to bough and treetop
to treetop, it spread with such astonishing celerity that he
found it hard on his heels, or whirling in a hot cloud over his
head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary
torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run
through the slash. And when, after running some distance
into the open field, to escape the stifling smoke and heat by
which he was even there assailed, he turned round to note
more fully the surprising progress that the terrible element he
had thus let loose was making, he beheld all that part of the
slash which he had a moment before passed through already
enveloped, from side to side, in a continuous blaze, whose red,
curling crest, mounting every instant higher and higher, was
advancing with the seeming speed of a race-horse on its fiery
destination. Half-appalled by the sight of such a sudden and
unexpected outburst of the fire he had kindled, Elwood hurried
on to his house, and joined his startled wife in the yard; when
the two took station on an adjoining knoll, and looked down
upon the conflagration in progress with increasing wonder and
uneasiness, — so comparatively new was the scene to them
both, and so far did it promise to exceed all their previous conceptions,
in magnitude and grandeur, of any thing of the kind
to be met with in the new settlements. And it was, indeed, a
grand and fearful spectacle: For, with constantly increasing
fury, and with the rapidity of the wind before which it was
driving, still raged and rolled on the red tempest of fire. Now
surging aloft, and streaking with its winding jets of flame the
fiercely whirling clouds of smoke that marked its advance, and
now dying away in hoarse murmurs, as if to gather strength
for the new and more furious outburst that the next moment
followed, it kept on its terrific march till it reached the central
elevation, which embraced the most tangled, densely covered,
and combustible part of the slash, and on which had been left
standing an enormous dry pine, that towered so up high above
the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for
the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through the
woods or over the lake. Here the fiery billow, as if governed
by the human tactics of a military assault, paused, parted, and
swept by on either side, till it had inclosed the elevation;
when suddenly it shot up from every side in an hundred converging
tongues of flame, which, soon meeting and expanding
into one, quickly enveloped the whole hill in one broad, unbroken
robe of sheeted fire, encompassed and mounted the
veteran pine, and around its colossal trunk formed a huge,
whirling pyramid of mingling smoke and flame that rose to the
mid-heavens, shedding, in place of the darkened sun, a lurid
glare over the forest, and sending forth the stormy roar of a
belching volcano. The next moment a shower of cinders and
the burning fragments of twigs, bark, and boughs which had
been carried high up by the force of the ascending currents,
fell hot and hissing to the earth over every part of the adjoining
fields, to and even far beyond the spot where Elwood and his
wife were standing.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Elwood, aroused from the
mute amazement with which he and his more terrified companion
had been beholding the scene, as soon as these indications
of danger were thus brought to his very feet. “Good Heavens!
this is more than I bargained for. See, — the fire is catching
on the stumps all over the field!”

“The house!” half-screamed Mrs. Elwood. “What is that
rising from the shingles up there near the top of the roof?”

“Smoke, as I am alive!” cried the other, in serious alarm, as
he glanced up to the roof, where several slender threads of
smoke were beginning to steal along the shingles. “Run,
Alice, run with the pails for the brook, while I throw up the
ladder against the gable. We must be lively, or within one
hour we shall be as houseless as beggars.”

“O, where is Claud? where is Claud?” exclaimed the

distressed wife and mother, as she flew to the house to do her
husband's bidding.

Yes, where was Claud? At the risk of the charge of purposely
tantalizing the reader, we must break off here, to follow
the young man just named, in the unexpected adventures which
he also had experienced during that eventful day. But for
this we will take a new chapter.