FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Nov. 10, 1887. 



A DEER HUNT. 



days in camp, four days of Minding snow 

 And bitter cold, monotony and smoke! 

 If this be pleasure 'tis a pleasure I 

 Shall henceforth shun with pleasure," Ernest cried, 

 As seated round the blazing camp-fire logs 

 We smoked and talked, the while the storm without 

 Wailed through the great woods like a Titan's ghost 

 Till near to midnight, when it passed away. 

 But when the first faint glimmer in the east 

 Bespoke the dawn, we rose and breakfasted, 

 Prepared our luncheon, laced our snowshoes on, 

 And, gun on shoulder, sought the open plain; 

 The blood of each one coursing through his veins, 

 And robust health felt to the finger tip. 

 O'er mile on mile of pure untrodden snow, 

 Save where the subtle fox nad left a track, 

 Or playful rabbit bounded fleetly o'er, 

 Due northward toward a gently sloping hill 

 Some, three leagues off, against a frosty wind 

 That came to meet us from the sullen north, 

 And tried to "nip" us as he passed us by. 

 We traveled on, good cheer in every heart, 

 Till three hours' walking brought us to the top; 

 And then we saw— oh, lovely, thrilling sight ! 

 The joy of which none but the hunter knows— 

 Our game at last. For on the plain beneath. 

 Between us and the margin of the wood 

 That hemmed the barren in, lay all at ease 

 A dozen deer; due windward from us, too, 

 And scarce a mile away. "Ours! Sure as fate, 

 They must be ours!" thought all; and every heart 

 Beat higher with excitement; every eye 

 Beamed with the hunter's lire, as flashed the horns 

 Of the great leader in the morning air. 

 Then ere another hour four loud reports 

 Rang out against the wintry silentness. 

 Awaking echoes from a thousand caves 

 W hich answered back again, and stretched at length 

 Tour deer lay bleeding on the trampled snow: 

 While Ernest shouted, "Good ! the leader's mine I" 

 And was as happy as a joyous lark 

 That sjngs in heaven on a summer morn. 

 North Sydney, Cape Breton, Nov. 1. H. E. Baker. 



THE OPEN AIR. 



A COLLOQUY. 



Evening in a camp on the shore of a lake. Three men — 

 one a guide— and a youth of twenty are reclining with- 

 in comfortable distance from a log fire. The young- 

 est of the group, turning his eyes overhead, sjoeaks: 



Henry. That was a night hawk charging down us. 

 Why is it that he makes that tremendous whirr and 

 swoop? Is he merely having his fling, or is it a business 

 method? I should think he would frighten every bug and 

 gnat off his preserve. 



Paid. I don't know, I am sure. 



[The silence is uninterrupted for several minutes. 



Henry. I am tired and comfortable and would be at 

 peace with the world if I hadn't broken my rod on that 

 bass to-day. But, "let that pass," as they say in the 

 play. 



Paul. Haven't fishing and shooting and taking to the 

 woods come to be a sort of fashion, of late? Isn't it what 

 they call "good form" for people who can find the money 

 and the time to go rusticating in some way at least once a 

 year? 



Peter. I think it is a good thing. 



Paul. Of course, but I am suspicious of fashions. How 

 much of it is not genuine? How much of it is done chiefly 

 because it it the proper thing to do, because Lord Dun- 

 raven having gone, and Mr. Charles Dudley Warner hav- 

 ing gone, for instance, and both having written so pleas- 

 antly about it, or because the President of the United 

 States goes and takes his wife, or because it's confessedly 

 "English," maybe, to shoot and to fish, why therefore 

 "all the world" taking note thereof must go too, and not 

 for any real love or appreciation of it. Is there anything 

 in this? 



Peter. Not so very much. But there is a class of per- 

 sons who take perhaps one experience of outdoor living 

 for some such reason as you express. Their after-exper- 

 iences, if they take another, are had under the protection 

 of a hotel or boarding house, bordering on the woods, and 

 where the real thing is only in sight. A good many of 

 the men are satisfied to spend their days dawdling in 

 boats, and their evenings in flirtation and dress clothes — 

 actually dress clothes, I am told. Thank fortune I never 

 saw them there. But they are few I have no doubt. The 

 charm of outdoor life works readily with most men. 

 The fascination of it I have never analyzed particularly. 

 The love of men for nature is an old story. 



Paul. Perhaps the individuals I referred to are excep- 

 tional; as exceptional, for instance, as the man who has 

 not music in his soul. I question whether they are much 

 "fitter" than he either. But I have always thought that 

 he was too harshly condemned. It is misfortune enough 

 to be born into the world without appreciation for music 

 without being accused of undeveloped treason into the 

 bargain. But, speaking of it, is it a demand of our 

 nature that brings you and me and so many others off 

 year after year like this, making us he on these hard 

 stones at night and run the chance of missing the milk in 

 our coffee in the morning and being caught out in the 

 rain, or what is it? 



Henry. Did you see that shooting star? There! there! 

 What a fine tail it had. I don't think I ever saw one 

 from beginning to end before. I am always looking the 

 other way. Comets are preferable. They keep in one 

 place while you look, and display themselves at a stand- 

 still. You are never startled out of your wits by some 

 one clapping you on the back and crying out, "See! see! 

 Ah, you're too late." I never kneAv of a comet, however, 

 that you didn't have to get up in the middle of the night 

 to look at, which is a drawback. 



Peter. Men whose fondness is for fishing and shooting 

 would, perhaps, explain it all by referring you to the ex- 

 citement of sport. It stirs the blood, for example, to 

 throw a fly on some good stream after trout. Every pool 

 and rift and bend opens new possibilities. One forgets 



lumself and all his worriments. You are looking for a 

 rise and it don't come, and it still don't come. Then you 

 get it, half unexpectedly. He isn't hooked. You try 

 him again. The fly trails along the dangerous edge of 

 the willow roots. Then he takes a good hold — he is a 

 pound, two pounds, and he seems four. You battle it 

 out witli him and he goes into the basket. I have heard 

 of a man who more than one morning came dowj^ to his 

 salmon river ready for the day's business, and who as 

 often went back to his quarters without wetting his line, 

 so little, for some reason or other, did he trust his nerves 

 to the excitement. A flock of ducks crowding into the 

 decoys will set any man's heart thumping away. Even 

 hunting the rabbit has excitement in it. You are con- 

 tinually on the qui vive as to whether from behind each 

 clump of leafless btishes there will start the small white 

 form across your path on the snow, and whether it will 

 be away and out of sight before you can get your gun to 

 your shoulder and bring him down. A light, please. 

 But that's not half the secret of man's fondness for out of 

 doors, I suppose. 



Henry. Perhaps not, but it's enough, unless you go 

 further and say that it is a poor day that brings no 

 squirrels to the bag or fish to the basket. That is my 

 doctrine. And if you two proceed to philosophize further 

 on the subject I go to bed. I am tired enough already. 



Paul. That is the old love of the chase. I suppose it is 

 in our blood. With some it is the one coirse strain. I 

 knew an Englishman, a gentleman and a "scholard," too, 

 who, let a rat run across a dining-room floor, as rats will 

 sometimes in well-regulated households, would positively 

 get wild with excitement. While the women were get- 

 ting on chairs and the other men getting out of the way, 

 he was after the rat like a rat-terrier in a rat pit. His 

 eyes blazed, and his expression grew set and determined 

 and almost ferocious. I have seen him corner the beast, 

 seize it at the back of the neck with his bare hand, and 

 crush the life out of it between his fingers. Wasn't that 

 in the man's blood? 



Peter. Don't you think it comes from what our ances- 

 tors were compelled to by their necessities? Meat and 

 skins were then- pursuit. Then the art of men found 

 easier ways of getting food and clothing, and with civili- 

 zation the business of following game lapsed or rose, 

 whichever it should be called, into the pastime of kings, 

 the nobles, the rich and the people. It's natural, exciting 

 and, moreover, healthful to hunt and to fish. There's 

 reason enough. 



Paul. But it is not the whole story by any means. I 

 don't agree with Harry that to catch fish and bag squir- 

 rels is all there is of the attraction in outdoor life. When 

 he shall have lived as long as I have and had as many 

 unsuccessful days, I predict his fondness for it will be 

 hardly less, if it is not greater, than it is now. This is 

 our mother earth, and has been our father's, and in a way 

 we recognize and aj>preciate her maternity. It is a 

 delight to wander over her fair surface where the hand 

 of man has changed her appearance the least; to lie on 

 her broad bosom — in warm weather— and rest, as it seems 

 to us we can only there rest, out of our tired and anxious 

 bodies the weariness that comes to all mortals. That is 

 refreshment. It is sufficient for you and me to have seen 

 to-day on that slope over yonder the fresh green grass, to 

 walk, as we did, through those woods where silence and 

 dignity and peace seemed to reign as nowhere else, to 

 have heard the liquid talking of the little brook back in 

 the swamp. You are getting quite enough enjoyment 

 now out of these surroundings— the lake, the stars up 

 there and that lapping water. You can do without 

 Harry's string of fish. 



Henry. Good man, Paul, you talk like a book — like 

 the little brook. Take a drink of this fine water which I 

 dipped from afar in the mere, as it were. Don't let the 

 wheels of loquaciousness lack oil for their dry cogs, so to 

 speak, or would you prefer a glass of — what, William, a 

 glass of 



Peter. "Come to these scenes of peace, 

 Where to rivers murmuring 

 The sweet birds all the summer sing, 

 Where care and toil and sadness cease." 



Harry. Et tu, Bruie! 



William. Mr. Henry, here is the glass of 



Henry. Thanks. 



Paul. That's the idea. Early in the life of man on 

 earth he tilled the ground. From that source he has con- 

 tinued to get his chief subsistence. That has brought 

 him out of doors and given him an inclination for things 

 that lie out of doors — the phases of spring and summer 

 and autumn, for instance. There partially originates the 

 impulse that pulls and hauls at you and me after a long 

 cooping up in the house. Who can tell? Like the star- 

 ling we want to get out. So men invariably look with 

 respect and regard on a garden. Men of affairs seem to 

 retain a repressed love for a farm, and, if they can have 

 it, take a country retreat in which to pass their declining 

 years. 



Peter. There is this, too. that is not to be overlooked — 

 the beauty that is out of doors. It is simple, true and 

 unaffected. The artificiality that is ever recurring in 

 man's attempted creations of beauty — his art — to maraud 

 blight his work has no place in nature. That goes with- 

 out saying. And yet with her the very heights of all 

 conceivable imagination and display are commonly 

 r cached., 



Paul. Yes, and I have for that reason sometimes idly 

 thought why it should be that so many pictures are 

 painted of her and why it is that we value them as we do. 

 For, consider, the best of them, the only strong ones, do 

 but reflect her in some aspect or mood, and yet there she 

 is everywhere about us, to be viewed directly for simply 

 the going out. Doubtless it is because that in this way 

 alone are held fast and still for us scenes and expressions 

 of nature that are of necessity shifting and changeable, 

 or because pictures bring in from out of doors trees and 

 vistas and landscapes, for instance, which to go abroad and 

 see is beyond our ability or convenience. But, that spec- 

 ulation aside, the beauty that lies out of doors is a most 

 powerful attraction. There are the colors and forms of 

 grasses, of flowers, of weeds, for example; what an end- 

 less and charming variety! They droop and bend on the 

 most graceful stems or are raised on stalks whose beauty 

 is enhanced by their absolute fitness. Even the bare 

 limbs of trees swayed in the winds of winter with their 

 irregular branches and twigs never fail to please the eye 

 | whatever turn or twist they take. You have felt the spell 

 I of natural beauty on a river — some broad stream— when 



the sun has sloped so far in the west that the shadows 

 have grown long on the water. The background is a 

 hill, perhaps; beyond it and above lies the translucent 

 blue of the sky. On one side the banks are wooded, show- 

 ing deep recesses, tangZed with creeping vines and bushes; 

 on the other, they come to the water's edge in green 

 meadows, fringed with crowding breaks and bending 

 ferns. Next grow the rushes and plumes of water plants, 

 lilies and weeds, and before them all, above, below and all 

 about, the water ripples and eddies and breaks in sparkles, 

 with quiet murmurs or in silence. Nothing could be 

 fairer. The beauty of it transports, elevates and satisfies. 

 It is one of a host of scenes equally fine. The wonder is 

 that the men do not oftener leave their dwelling places 

 indoors filled not unlikely with the gimcracks, the toys, 

 the artificial embroideries and decorations of human de- 

 vice and go out and refresh themselves in the sight and 

 reach of the divine creations beyond their thresholds. 

 To some extent our inherited love of the chase and our 

 inclination to throw ourselves on the lap of mother earth 

 explain our love of out of doors, but beside these causes 

 our sense and appreciation of beauty explain it. 



Peter. You remember that Tennyson has a poem called 

 the "Palace of Art." It describes a palace where the 

 soul was to dwell apart from the world in the companion- 

 ship of philosophy, learning; music and art. The rooms 

 of the palace were hung with pictures. They are from 

 nature and illustrate its beauty as this poet can. What 

 you are saying reminds me of them. He says: 



"Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, 

 All various, each a perfect whole 



From living nature, fit for every mood, 

 And change of my still soul. 



For some were hung with arras green and blue. 

 Showing a gaudy summer morn, 



Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew 

 His wreathed bugle horn. 



******** 



And one the reapers at their sultry toil, 

 In front they bound the sheaves. Behind 



Were realms of upland prodigal in oil 

 And hoary to the wind. 



******** 



And one, an English home— gray twilight poured 



On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 

 Softer than sleep— all things in order stored, 



A haunt of ancient peace." 



Paid. That is fine. 

 [A lull in the conversation. Henry, who had with- 

 drawn to his sleeping place under the boat, gets 

 tip, and after pulling some heavy logs across the 

 diminished fire, muttering meanwhile some re- 

 flection on people who do not know enotigh to go 

 in when it rains — albeit the night is clear and 

 starlit — returns to his couch and is soon asleep. 

 The others follow not long after. Being finally 

 settled beneath their heavy blankets, Peter re- 

 sumes: 



Peter. But that Palace of Art failed. The soul could 

 not keep up its making rnerry as the builder of the palace 

 would have it. The fine architecture, the fountains, the 

 pictures and the company of the poets and plulosophers 

 failed to satisfy, and it begged for a cottage in a vale 

 where it could mourn and pray. 



Paul. There is yet a deeper secret. We are constantly 

 groping for a hint or suggestion of another world — of the 

 hereafter. Whence we come does not bother us so much 

 as where we go after this lif e. That is the puzzle ever 

 before us when we give ourselves time to tliink of death, 

 of a future life, of infinity, and all that. It often occurs 

 to me — it is no new suggestion — that this same contact 

 with the outdoor world, the living in sight of mountains, 

 beside the ocean, where the great expanse of water 

 stretches on and on to join the sky, where the storms are 

 the most felt, where the horizon, the edge of the earth, is 

 visible, and all the mysterious phenomena are on display, 

 that such a life brings men nearer to the bourne from 

 which no traveller has returned, nearer to the Creator 

 than any other. If thoughts of religion do not come to a 

 man there, will they ever come to him? "The groves 

 were God's first temples." Are they not his best? 



Peter. You talk like one of Buskin's books. 



Paid. Let your mind travel up among those stars. 

 Imagine following the line of light from that star — 

 Arcturus, isn't it? — on and on to the star itself, and con- 

 ceive that, as you move up, and up, and up, its apparent 

 growth is hardly perceptible, although you travel thou- 

 sands and thousands of miles. But infinitely little by 

 little it enlarges, and at length discovers itself a great 

 black planet wheeling in space, its distance from you still 

 immeasurable. It may be tenfold larger than this earth 

 on which you and I are mere specks. Beyond that star, 

 in every direction, lie thousands of others, which if seen 

 from it are mere pin pricks, as it now is from us. Then 

 go the other way, down to a grain of sand on the seashore, 

 and from that imagine the diminution to the atom of the 

 physicists. No man whose senses are not dulled to stupid- 

 ity can regard these things without awe and without 

 marking the omnipotence in creation. Out of doors there 

 is this suggestion ; within the hint is a hundredfold less. 

 You noticed the broad golden reflection that the sun 

 made on the quiet water from the horizon to our feet as 

 it set to-night. It was smooth and burnished, and looked 

 as firm as a road. For some reason it aroused my dull 

 imagination to a fancy— childish, perhaps. It seemed to 

 me as if it might be a pathway to the other world— as if 

 it led up to its very portals among the bright clouds. 

 Surely any dreams of a future glory could hardly fail of 

 fulfillment in the glory that must exist in the regions to 

 which such a pathway goes. And on some midsummer 

 day, one of a succession that have been hot and clear, you 

 have observed those great cumulus clouds that stand 

 motionless all the day along the horizon. As a boy I used 

 to think that behind them must lie the promised land. 

 To me they were the grand and stately barriers between 

 this world and another that was at least as peaceful, 

 bright and beautiful as this. Toil up and over th en- 

 folds, soft and billowy, yet firm and steadfast as 

 any hills, and behind them surely would be found the 

 cities of the Lord. I don't much doubt but that such 

 sights help out the dull faculties of mature minds as well. 

 And storms, impressive as they are seen from a window, 

 convey an adequate sense of their unlimited but restrained 

 power only out of doors— and not in towns and among 

 houses, but off on the hills and prairies and by the sea. 

 Then comes to a man a sense of his weakness and inse- 



