May 2, 1903.T 
FOREST AND STREAM 
849 
set before them; but it is both singular and disgrace- 
ful that it is so difificult to convince them of their 
own incapacity." For "we constantly recognize things 
by their least important attributes." 
And up here on the Delaware my comrade has been 
studying this sure resentment, as shown in our friend, 
the keen and satirical lumberman. This native, if he 
knew the words, would first call us rhapsodists, and 
then spasmodists. He cannot stay away from the 
magnet of the camp and its fire; but he sniffs and 
sneers his contempt and indignation for our constant 
admiration of earth, air, sky and water. 
Last night my tent-mate named to him over fifty 
birds that he had seen along the river, and the flow- 
ers — cowslips, blue and yellow iris, white and yellow 
daisies, elecampane, arrowhead, eight kinds of ferns 
and six mosses, hawkweed, fuchsia, foxglove, hare- 
bell, honeysuckle, hyacinth, creepers, lichens, pansy, 
myrtle, pitcher-plant, moccasin-fiower, marigold, loose- 
strife, Jack-in-the-pulpit, ivy, jasmine and four kinds 
of lilies. 
And he picked grasses, naming them as nimblewill, 
))orcupine, reed, sheep's fescue, bunch, vernal, and 
wood-grass. 
Then he likened the dewy white of the flowers to 
frozen moonlight, to sea-foam, to pearl and opal, and 
their blue to azure skies; and the wet black to night. 
And this morning he exhibits several butterflies 
fastened to the canvas wall of the tent with pins — ^his 
captures during an arduous day of chases through the 
woods-. And he calls these flies "Oreades," "Aphro- 
dites" and "Ursulas." 
This offensive pedantry has thoroughly roused the 
resentment of the lumberman. To use the words at the 
head of this article, he feels that he is thought to be 
"contempible because he does not understand it." 
Finally, he is baited by my humorous chum with a 
lot of rhapsody about the beauty of flowers — osten- 
sibly a talk to the two Princeton men, who are our 
tent neighbors: 
"He who intently studies the colors of flowers will 
get rare lessons, noting hues like pale-green ice, frozen 
rainbows, snowy pallor, deepest crimson; iridescence 
of pearly corolla, black of stamen, and many shades of 
heliotrope, yellow, amber and purple in the wild dawn- 
flowers. The blooms of these wind-bells that nod and 
sway in the wind, are wild, often stand in the gloom 
and shadow of forests, and are far more precious than 
those from a hothouse. For they are the midsummer 
ground-stars of the woods — their blossomed chalices 
'showing in hues of corn-flower, mauve, lavender, violet, 
lemon and indigo — with grays as of storms on hills, 
pearls in fogs, and intense scarlet and purple of sun- 
'rises — all peeping out from among the langes, hih 
Wrrls, plumes and arrows of thp ferns." 
This is bad enough, but worse follows. This natiya 
regards all rhyming as the work of lunatics; and his 
fury is fanned as he has four stanzas of a "poem" 
read to him about the silence in which the greatest 
work of the universe is done. Here is a sample verse: 
"The lark is lovely as he sings up in the morning sky; 
That vault above in silent love is singing to the eye. 
Sublimity and wondrous power are in the thtmder's crash: 
Sublimer yet the silence of the dreaded lightning's flash. 
Through space all noiseless ever moves our loving mother, Earth; 
Still days and nights as on she rolls are given wondrous birth. 
For silent sunshine comes to us from that great heaven afar. 
Each distant sun in silence twinkling like a little star." 
This is the last straw, and the explosion follows: 
"Say!" he slowly drawls, with half-shut eyes. "I 
invite ye ter kum with me in yer canoe, 'baout er mile 
daown ther river, an' go up a crick. Bin wantin' ter 
show ye that place fur a week.' It's jest the purtiest 
wun ye ever sot yer eyes on." 
Early the next morning he takes us to a stagnant, 
miasmatic lagoon, running back and widening into a 
horrible marsh between hills. Croaking frogs, green 
scum, steamy mist rising from foul-smelling water 
where snakes and tadpoles swarm! Flies and gnats 
torment us. Suffocating malodors and muskiness rise 
from miry ooze and slimy grass ! 
"Thar!" growls our guide in triumph. "Yew fellers 
see so much durned bewty in all 'Nachur' an' water an' 
sky, that I jes' natch'ly wanted yer 'pinion 'baout this 
yer! Yer purtend ter see it all so miz'ble purty round 
hyar jes' 'cause yer thinks it's er mitey big credit ter 
yer own fool selves ter let on yer see it! (A roar of 
laughter.) Yer talk 'bout light, an' stars, 'an dew, an' 
colors, an' durn 'preshus' green trees! It makes me 
sick! An' when ye made up some sickish stuff ye call 
'potry' 'baout everythin' bein' so tarnation still an' 
'sweet,' I jes thought I'd like yer jedgmint on this lot 
0' fever an' agur, an' yaller jandice, an' skunk's cab- 
bidge. Jes' pint aout sum purty things hyar, will yer!" 
He poles the boat into the reed-grass, and through 
a channel curving to the left, that opens into — a vision! 
Solemn hemlocks stand in a wide half-circle around 
a silent, windless basin of shallow water, thirty rods 
across. It is margined by emerald reed-grass, and in- 
side that plumy crescent smiles a great, blue border of 
iris flowers! 
And over that whole basin the water is thickly 
starred with the fragrant white and yellow blooms of 
the pond lilies — great wax-like flowers, wet nymphje 
buds just opened! Out in the hemlocks the warblers 
and crows are calling. A hawk screams in circling 
flight. The blue gleam of a kingfisher's plunge from a 
low tree, comes through the reed-grass, followed by 
Jiis rattling cry as he rises from the water! 
■\Ve tfi^nl? the IqTpfjprna^o, ai}4 disgust deepejis. 
But he cannot resist the hypnotic attraction of our 
camp, and shames us the next day by bringing milk 
for our coffee and wild berries and honey for our 
bread. We have sent a dozen fine bass to his house, 
and once have helped to eat fish at a "tea" given by 
his gentle-voiced and sweet-faced wife. We wonder 
how this burly, rough man ever. succeeded in winning 
her, and begin to realize how full of human life and 
history, effort and self-sacrifice, many of these river 
cottages must be. 
Sorrow and disaster were soon to visit him. When 
we make the canoe run from Hancock to Lackawaxen 
a month later, we find him suffering from a crushing 
blow and slide of a log at his mill. The doctors give 
him little hope. He has tried to hobble down to the 
river in response to our telegram. We beach the 
canoe and go to his house; it is but a few rods from 
the water. His eyes have the patient, hunted look of 
one whose remaining days are few. 
"I am now like that tree.," he tells us in weak and 
broken words. 
Here is a picture of it. We wonder how many read- 
ers of Forest and Stream would realize its desperate 
state, and note its scanty foliage and scarred trunk, 
without the aid of the caption. 
We are to camp on a little wooded island two miles 
below Hancock; and to-night the canoe and tent go 
back up the river on the train, for the fishing on the 
run to-day has been excellent, and it has been a day 
of thunderstorms, sunbeams and sky-wide ranges of 
cloud-mountains, all now hurrying eastward before 
high winds. 
Mindful of the criticism that we risk, we yet try to 
tell something of the day's variations and moods of 
light. 
A picture is given of the sharp, sombre gray, lights fall- 
ing over hills and river on a cloudy day at a point 
near Lackawaxen, and showing, but with woeful in- 
completeness, even in that favorable light, the river 
rushing over rock}- shallows, and its waves, curvature 
and foam. 
Statements of the laws by which light changes, would 
lead us very far into algebra and geometry, and involve 
the reader in a fog of technical terms in connection 
with over five hundred named colors — all of which 
would not be read. But we may state some of the 
"effects" during such a day as this. 
Daily, from east to west, march many sources of 
light, sunshine flooding all, but with an always chang- 
ing angle of incidence, and itself never alike for two 
moments — clouds, moisture and hues reflected back 
from water and forests, var3ang forever! Twilight, 
dusk, moonlight, starlight, sometimes all these sources 
of radiance joining! 
Brilliant sunshine at dawn, flooding the Delaware 
Valley! Then the duskiness of gathering storm! Fear 
and gloom of three thunderstorms during the day, 
their bellows roaring and echoing among hills! Blind- 
ing flashes from the retreating clouds; then, sunshine 
after rain along a windless river, while rain-curtains 
exhaust themselves dreamily on far easterii hills! 
Shimmering heat; radiance caught and held in clouds 
of infinitely varying form and volume, letting down 
long shafts of light; and this all modified and adorned 
by reflections from hills and flowing water — emerald of 
forests, yellow of banks! Rose-light of titanic cloud- 
domes — crimson canopies interwoven with banners of 
waving flame that dart and sway across the vault; 
steam-like rags of fantastic vapor changing to lurid 
wreaths; white mists floating upward, rallying in surges 
and boiling up the unsubstantial, quivering blue! 
All seemingly the merest chaos of chance; yet not 
one line, hue or motion that is not governed by stern- 
est law. Never one false curve, not a single light that 
is not complex. It is the music of infinitely changing 
form and color — fragility of form — toppling, uprearing, 
evanescent, yet always with the most exquisite grace 
of -undulation — all wilderness, seeming accident, and with 
perspectives of hopeless intricacy, yet perfect in curva- 
ture, and flow and freedom of every line. And before 
the rising of the steady sunset gale from the west, a 
rainbow! 
All day we have also noted the intricacy, glide and 
play of the shadows, often more visible than the ob- 
jects which cast them. All day we have felt that the 
tortured or peaceful clouds were not so much clouds, 
as the visible form and presence of the winds that 
drove them. And now, at night, eye and heart are 
bewildered. 
The pen drops, impotent, for it attempts the impos- 
sible, and the words border on the ridiculous — ^whicli 
every satirist hunts, and, when found, whips without 
mercy. 
And yet very few of these satirists can see, much less 
feel, the grace and beauty of natural scenery; and al- 
most none of them recognize or believe in its sublime 
and transfigured moments. I note this frequently in 
conversations overheard before famous paintings in 
the New York galleries. Men who cannot tell the 
normal number of their own teeth, or even ribs, will 
"analyze" the figures in a painting by Corregio, Rubens 
or Turner, and are even paid art-critics ! Many confi- 
dent picture buyers, capitalists who have rushed 
through half the galleries abroad, w-ill chatter in voluble 
fault-finding with the "technique" of Gerome, Tintoret, 
or even Angelo. I have before me several amusing 
letters between such wealthy buyers, masterpieces of 
inane "criticism."- 
We are exhausted with work on the flooded river, 
the roar of its waters and the many hours of electric 
agitation in the sky. We board the Erie train and 
smoke silently, watching the changing vistas as forests 
bow before high winds and night deepens, and the 
ragged clouds are blown in a skj^-dance to the east 
like withered leaves. L. F. Brown. 
[One of the illustrations for the chapter of this 
series published last week was omitted; and that the 
picture may go with the text we reprint here these 
paragraphs.] 
The college men plead with him to "go on." 
"Very well. Here is my chum, who has fished for forty 
ye^LTS, You alsOj e apglers 5 and I am a landscape phq- 
