90 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



mantic budded cherry birches ; white breasted nuthatches 

 running head-downward along the bark of great tulips 

 and maples ; dozens of slate-colored juncos flitting along 

 the path ahead of us, each displaying the two white 

 feathers in the tail as they dance through the sunlight 

 suggesting glimpses of lace ruffles flashing among the feet 

 of lovers at a harvest ball ; and now and then a fluffy 

 tailed gray squirrel leaping from bendind limb to sag- 

 ging bough, remind us that there is still much life left 

 in the winter woods, in spite of pot-hunters. 



Where a country lane meanders down the hill from 

 quaint Dutch farm houses between lichened stone walls, 

 an old fashioned wooden bridge, such as the first Head- 

 less Horseman bridge was, crosses the brook. The hands 

 that laid up the stone walls and the bridgeheads have been 

 dust, perhaps, for two hundred and more years, but the 

 thoroughness of their work still testifies to backaches suf- 

 fered in the 

 clearing and 

 subduing of the 

 land. Under 

 the bridge, on a 

 beam, we find 

 the house of 

 one of the later 

 dwellers, a last 

 summer Phoe- 

 be, who reared 

 her brood here 

 while barefoot 

 boys and red- 

 cheeked girls 

 trudged past 

 o v e r head to 

 school. 



By one of the 

 roads that cross 

 the Hollow 

 from Ossining 



to Tarry town we find the ruined cellar of a Colonial 

 farm house that must have stood here the night that 

 Major Andre came down through the Hollow to the 

 enormous tulip tree, hard by, to his capture and undoing 

 by three American patriots. In the story of Ichabod 

 Crane's ride you will remember the tulip tree stood in 

 the center of the road, "towering like a monarch above 

 all the other trees bf the region, a landmark seen for 

 miles around, its gnarled, fantastic limbs curling down 

 to the ground and rising again in the air." Perhaps 

 tulip trees did those things then. Perhaps it was be- 

 cause the tree was known to the Yankee school teacher 

 as the Major Andre tree that his frightened imagination 

 made the great limbs, large enough for the trunks of 

 other trees, contort in memory of the capture and sad 

 fate of the British officer. There is such another tulip 

 standing by the stone wall in front of the old cellar 

 we are looking at. We pause to wonder who built this 

 ancient manse, the stones in the cellar wall of which are 



GREAT OLD OAKS, THEIR MIGHTY ARMS STRIPPED OF LEAVES, HELP THE YOUNG GROWTH 

 OF JUNIPER AND CEDAR GUARD THE- ANCIENT FIELDS, WHERE IRVING'S IMAGINATION 

 PICTURED THE FAIRIES DANCING ON MOONLIGHT NIGHTS 



laid up with such fine precision. Is the family that once 

 dwelt in peace and happiness here now extinct, or is it 

 listed among the distinguished in the blue book of the 

 metropolis? The chimney has fallen about the great 

 fireplace in the living room. Perhaps Washington shared 

 the family circle in front of the glowing andirons in this 

 room, years ago. The fire that destroyed the house made 

 a clean sweep of barns and outbuildings even the well- 

 sweep and the old oaken bucket. We lean down into the 

 narrow, deep well, falling away into darkness. It is so 

 deep the water never freezes in winter, and ten feet 

 below us the mossy stones are chinked with masses of 

 ferns still green and alive because of the warmth of the 

 water and earth below. With an old rake tied to a 

 stick we bring up one of the fronds and find it to be the 

 narrow, sword-like blade of the ebony fern now ex- 

 tinct in the neighborhood, but growing here year after 



year and gen- 

 eration after 

 gen e ration in 

 this old store- 

 house of Na- 

 ture's refresh- 

 ing drink. 

 One wonders 

 whether 'twas 

 the fascinating 

 Katrina Van 

 Tassel who, 

 wandering here 

 with her two 

 lovers so long 

 ago, on a re- 

 turn from the 

 upper reaches 

 of the witching 

 Hollow, drop- 

 ped into the 

 well from her 

 basket of wild plants gathered for the garden of Castle 

 Philipse, one tiny and delicate frond of the fern as 

 Broth Bones or Ichabod poised the oaken bucket on 

 the rim of the well for her red lips to drink from. 

 Or else why, through the years and generations, while 

 lovers succeeded lovers in the romances of the mystic 

 Hollow, did the delicate and persistent fern continue to 

 grow and spread among the damp rocks in the old well 

 while it became extinct elsewhere? 



We follow the brook through more laurel and pipsis- 

 siwa-haunted woods to the shore of Pocantico Lake 

 where the brook rises, and from which the towns below 

 now get their drinking water. Over the center of the 

 lake fish-hawks, that have come up in a few moments 

 from the wide stretches of the Tappan Zee, opposite 

 Tarrytown, are wheeling and circling. How like air- 

 planes they are ! We wish, now that so much chill 

 oxygen is in our systems from the long walk, that we 

 were either fish-hawks or had an airplane, that we 

 might be back home quickly. 



