Part 12

Four days later I returned, and found two little round balls of yellow down, just out of their shells which were lying near. Creeping up softly within touch of the mother, I had a chance of observing her carefully. She had no shelter or protection but a leaf of the False Lily-of-the-Valley (_Unifolium Canadense_) which covered her eyes and part of her head. She never stirred a feather nor blinked either of her round brown eyes. Close to the earth like the leaves themselves, pressed down with winter snows, it was difficult to distinguish her feathers from them. I finally frightened her from the spot. The poor little birds heard their mother’s cry of alarm, and, babes as they were, instinctively understood it all, opening their dreamy sad eyes, and trying to hide away. Nest they had none, and rolled about over the leaves. I visited these birdlings so often, in my eagerness to make observations, that the mother finally left her young. One cold night, finding them almost freezing and starving, I took them home. They did not live more than a week, however, on account of my ignorance as to what food to give them. During this time they became very tame and dependent upon my care, rejoicing strangely when I came near.

The Southern Chuck-Will’s-Widow, a species closely allied to our Whippoorwill, builds no nest, but is said to move her eggs and young, in her large mouth, from place to place, wherever she may choose to abide. It would be well if Nature had thus taught our Northern Whippoorwills.

I continued to visit the Bogs of Etchowog, collecting azalea, iris, and the other flowers in their turn. In circling the Pownal Pond one day, I ran upon a Water Thrush (_Selurus noveboracensis_) and her brood of five little foolish, half-grown thrushlings. The awkward birds ran peeping across my path, not in the least afraid. I caught them all, and placed three in my hat, leaving two for consolation to the mother, while I hurried home to obtain a photograph of my prizes. But I was not able to reconcile them to their new conditions and food so easily as I had domesticated my whippoorwills. As soon as I had secured a negative, I returned them, nearly famished, to the mother, who was running along the shore of the pond, tipping-up her tail like the wagtail. These birds are swift in flight, skimming near the water, whistling as it were, while they catch insects. Their nest is very difficult to find, being as a rule among the roots of trees along the shores of ponds or streams in damp woods. I frequently observe these birds walking in the stony brook flowing down from Cold Spring in Chalk Pond region, as well as about the shores of Aurora’s Lake in North Adams.

[Illustration: =Motherless Baby Whippoorwills.=]

The hillside clearings in this region are the haunts of woodchucks (_Arctomys monax_). Many holes show where they have burrowed. Usually these ground-pigs seek for their habitations clover and bean fields, which furnish them provender. Exploring the dooryard of the woodchuck, I found several plants of the Small Round-Leaved Orchis maturing their seed-capsules. Not every wild pig’s garden bears this evidence of æstheticism.

The fertilization of these strange Round-Leaved Habenarias is unique. The anther is eager to give up its pollinia. The adhesive masses shot from their cells when I touched them, and fastened to the head of my hat-pin. When placed near the viscid surface of the stigma, they were drawn forcefully from it, thus impregnating the ovules in the ovary. These masses of pollinia, once glued upon the thigh of an insect, would remain there until deposited on the attractive stigma of their proper species.

On my next excursion to the Bogs of Etchowog, I found nothing new, save six spikes of the Small Purple-Fringed Orchis in bud. I was too early for Pogonias and Limodorums, which are fast disappearing from this swamp. The colony of Fragrant Yellow Moccasin-Flowers, in the Glen of Comus, was photographed one morning while the sunshine struggled in through the leaves, lighting up the flowers in this labyrinth of tropical foliage. They were fragrant in the highest degree—a true form of _Cypripedium parviflorum_, with a slight variegated effect of carmine coloring on the tips of the slippers. This is the first instance of such spots of crimson on the exterior observed by me. Near this group stands also a larger colony of _Cypripedium hirsutum_ seedling plants. Several had bloomed this season. One slipper had been destroyed by what appeared to be a snail. Nothing of the flower remained but the column, with the adhering anthers and stigmatic lobes. The sepals and petals, including the labellum, were eaten away. The snail was still clinging to the column, and must have found some delicate food in the juices of such golden petals to cause him to tear the flower apart. He may, however, have fertilized the species in the act; yet the destruction of its parts would have weakened the possible chances of the seed-capsule maturing properly.

[Illustration: =A Colony of the Small Yellow Fragrant Moccasin-Flower= (_Cypripedium parviflorum_) =in the Glen of Comus, District Fourteen, Pownal, Vermont.=

“_There’s a haunt I would lead you to,_ _Home of the gossamer and the dew._ _Where, from out of the murky loam,_ _Springs the sacred flower of the gnome._”

CLINTON SCOLLARD.]

In the bend of Ball Brook, amid the ferns, the Tall Northern Green Orchis (_Habenaria hyperborea_) blooms, its seeds having floated down here from the seed-capsules ripening on plants bordering the stream above.

Wild Ginger-Root (_Asarum Canadense_) grows abundantly along the sphagnous edges of the Swamp of Oracles. This plant produces bell-shaped blossoms, which invariably turn downward, hiding in the soft soil beneath the leaves. Its creeping roots are of a spicy, ginger-like flavor. The leaves—kidney-shaped—appear as small burdocks at a distance. The generic name is very obscure, although the plant was known to the early Greeks, and later known in Latin as _Asarum_, _Nardus rustica_, and _Perpensa_. Macer called it _Vulgago_, while it was known in England and Germany in 1578 as _Asarabacca_, _Folefoot_, and _Hazlewort_. It was used by the ancients as an antidote for venomous serpent bites, sciatica, difficult respiration, and various other diseases.

On June 15th I made my farewell journey to Etchowog. Turning into the thicket, east of the Barber Mill, I followed a path as far as possible, and then waded through sphagnum into a meadow-like clearing of three acres or more, concealed in the deepest of solitude. It was closed in on all sides by low alders, willows, and beautiful green spires of tamarack-trees. The sphagnum was many feet deep, spangled with flowers; and rising above the swamp grasses were iris blades and buckbean leaves. It was a little world whose limitations were the infinite blues above, the depths of moss below, and the circling green-fringed forest trees. The sunshine knew the field, and poured in upon it. I was obliged to wade slowly over the quaking sphagnum, assisted by pine-slabs, strewn about as stepping blocks.

The oblong green leaves of the rare Buckbeans (_Menyanthes trifoliata_)—found also in the Cranberry Bogs, north of Pownal Pond—were here thickly entangled over the greater area of the meadow. A few spikes still were in blossom, although the greater portion were adorned with the bullet-like glossy, smooth seed-pods. Later in the season they would slowly ripen, and throw thousands of seeds broadcast over the sphagnous field. It is evident that this plant—so infrequent in its general distribution—is most productive of its own seeds in its chosen haunts. This species is a sister genus of the Blue-Fringed Gentians, abundant along the edges of these bogs during October. Gentians derived their generic name from King Gentius of Illyria, who first used them in medicine.

The Floating-Heart (_Limnanthemum lacunosum_), closely allied to the Buckbeans, grows also in our marshy pools, the leaves being heart-shaped, instead of oblong as those of _Menyanthes_.

In the middle of this swamp an island arose, over which grew willow bushes and tamarack spires, interspersed by grape-vines. I crawled through the bushes without finding a flower worthy of description. Surrounding the edges of this island, tall spikes of the Fragrant Northern Orchis (_Habenaria dilatata_) rose above the water-soaked sphagnum. I was able to reach a few of them, then sought the _terra firma_ of the tangled swamp beyond. I ran great risk, since I was forced to wade the soaking bogs where the cat-tail flags were dense. I managed to jump from hummock to hummock, not waiting for the grass to grow beneath my feet. Beyond I struggled through the low tangled trees covered with the Wild Frost Grape-Vines or Possum-Grape (_Vitis cordifolia_), amid tamaracks, swamp-maples, poison-sumach and ivy-vines. I observed many enormous colonies of Pitcher Plants, still in bloom in the shades. Finally I reached the muddy bank of Ball Brook, ragged, dirty, and tired. I found the stream impassable because of the mud. Even old Major had sense enough not to go too near the stream. I was forced to make my way, as well as possible, back to the mill, among piles of old tinware that had been accumulating since the early Revolutionary days of 1777.

Once out of this place, it was a pleasure to enter the open Pitcher Plant Meadow, where I searched for Pogonias and Limodorums without success. I circled about the swamp and turned away from it at the north, climbing over the hill above the Washon Bridge, toward Cranberry Swamp. Blue jays were screaming loudly, and catbirds were mewing in the bushes near the pools. I found the path near the pond, which led through luxuriant ferns to the shades of pines beyond. Here the ground was carpeted with fragrant needles and cones. Bull-frogs croaked hoarsely in the swamp beneath the lily-pads, and over the hillside crept yards of the evergreens known as Ground-Pine (_Lycopodium obscurum_) and Club-Moss (_Lycopodium Selago_), known to the Greeks as Wolf’s-Claw. This moss takes hold of the earth with its small roots, like the claws of a wolf.

This corner of Etchowog was the home of the mosquito, and I was obliged to use a bough of sweet-fern to keep the pests from devouring me.

“Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill, and filmy wing, Does murmur, as thou slowly sail’st about, ... Thou’rt welcome to the town—but why come here?”[46]

XV

White Oaks and Gregor Rocks

I can recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there is a valor in that time the bare memory of which is armor that can laugh at any blow of fortune.—THOREAU, _Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_.

I had been on the trail for white Moccasin-Flowers for years; and on June 16th a lad of White Oaks Valley promised to guide me to the Forks of Broad Brook, and show me a colony of absolutely White Lady’s Slippers. We arrived at the junction of the Field Brook—where it crosses the White Oaks Road near Richmond’s Farm—and turned our horse’s head through the fields eastward along the rude loggers’ path travelled in winter. We were obliged to cross fields of oats and potato vines in order to arrive on the summit of these rounded hills. Here, amid the white birches and sweet-fern bushes, we fastened our horse. Among these ferns and briars I discovered five enormous orange-yellow mushrooms, which, apparently, were of recent growth. They were gorgeous to behold, and smelled like new-made bread, yet they were extremely poisonous. They were, upon examination, found to spring from a socket, above which a ring encircled the stalk. This is characteristic of genus _Amanita_ of this form of fungus. This poisonous species with some susceptible people produces serious results if only handled, or if its fragrance is inhaled. I collected three specimens, however, and put them in my vasculum.

We now descended the slopes eastward leading to the Wilsey Lot, where we found a road leading up through Broad Brook Valley to the Forks. The path was bordered with tall, luxuriant brakes at least four feet high. They were covered with dew, and brushing against them, we became wet through. My guide was an alert observer, and darting off here and there into the ravine, he brought forth gay blossoms of the Showy Queen of the Moccasin-Flowers. As we proceeded, we came to a bend of the brook and followed along high ledges of rock, where we crossed to the right over the boulder-filled stream. A quarter of a mile more brought us to another bend in the brook, and here we re-crossed, and at the left hand abruptly climbed the hillside in the sphagnous bed of a rivulet. Here, my guide said, were the Pure White Moccasin-Flowers. They proved to be pale pink blossoms of the Showy Reginæ, however, and not, as I had hoped, the rarer _Cypripedium candidum_, or even the albinos of _Cypripedium reginæ_.

It is said that in a swamp near the Forks both of the Yellow Moccasin-Flowers bloom. American Mountain Laurel, the beautiful Calico-bush, was in full bloom hereabout, so the day was not without some new treasure found.

[Illustration: =The Mountain Laurel.= (_Kalmia latifolia._)

“_And all the rugged mountainside_ _Thro’ billowy curves is seen;_ _The roadsides meet in ample shade,_ _With showers of light and golden glooms,_ _And bubbling up the rocky ways_ _The clustered laurel blooms._”

ELAINE GOODALE.]

The wildness of Broad Brook Valley is delightful. The stream rises in luxuriant swamps on the eastern summit of the Dome, between Stamford and Haystack Mountains. The Forks along the stream are formed by this one and others flowing down from Mount Hazen, which lies to the southeast of the Dome. The valley is comparatively wide, and the stream, as its name implies, is broad. The chasm bears scars of days when the heights to the northeast were capped with glaciers, towering thousands of feet above the present mutton-backed summits, which were formed into their dome-like shapes by the erosions of this ice sheet. The channel of the stream is full of tumbling boulders, and during April, when the snows are melting, a wilder brook is unknown in the Hoosac Valley. Three seasons it has become so rough and swollen that it has carried bridges and all else in its course before it, threatening the houses and little chapel, as it rushed downward to the Hoosac.

Bears inhabit these dark ravines, and wander close to the habitation of man in the Hollow. Not far from where we collected our flowers, a bear had been killed last season by two lads fishing in the stream. As I left the glen, and drove out over the moss-grown hills, and through the hollows, I found the ground red with wild strawberries. Needless to say, I paused until I had my fill of this luscious fruit, and I carried a birch-bark cornucopia of it away with me.

On June 18th I visited my great colony of Showy Reginæ in Rattlesnake Swamp. As they were not yet unfolded in their perfection of magenta coloring, I put up a warning on a tree near them not to rob the colony until photographed,—fearing some fisherman would behold and gather the blossoms. However, they were photographed successfully on the 20th.

The stumps and trees in this corner of the swamp are covered with dead boughs, laden with lichens and reindeer moss. A kind of moss known as _Usnea_ hangs from the boughs of the trees above. The whole region is humid and luxuriant, and could almost deceive one into believing that he was in the jungles of the Southlands, instead of among the glooms of the Green Mountains. The beautiful Butterfly-fungus (_Polypores_) is especially interesting throughout this swamp, growing on dead trees and logs. Another pretty species, found on stumps and the earth, has scarlet-tinted cups, nestling in early spring amid the mosses. The trees and stones display both their gray and foliaceous lichens everywhere hereabout; and in the fields, the smoking puff-balls burst beneath the footsteps. Foxes Fire-Eyes is common in this region. It is decaying wood, green in color, said to be full of threads of phosphorescent fungi. During the night this wood gives out a soft, luminous light, which if it happens to come from a large stump, often frightens both travellers and horses along our woodland roads.

In the Swamp of Rattlesnake Brook may be found the Pitch or Torch-Pine (_Pinus rigida_), shad-bushes, white and black birches, chestnuts, high huckleberries, and small bushes of the Ague Tree (_Sassafras_), which seem rare here, but are abundant in southern New York. The odd spires of the double or black spruce are also found among the denizens of this region. From May until late November the swamp brings forth, in their season, arbutus, mountain snowberry vines, St. John’s wort, low huckleberry, the evergreen leaves of _Gaultheria_, prince’s pine, creeping evergreens, numerous rushes and sedges. Here, too, the goldthread entangles the roots of mosses and trilliums, while the Sundew (_Drosera rotundifolia_), creeps along the mossy sides of the wood road, and in the deeper sphagnum about the stream. The rare Large Whorled Pogonia (_Pogonia verticillata_), of the Orchid Family, has been collected in this swamp for three seasons. This orchid is rare in New England, save in Massachusetts and Connecticut. It was first found in Vermont near High Bridge and Colchester by Messrs. Robbins and Oakes, the pioneer botanists, who passed through the State in 1829. The delicate emerald green leaves of Clintonia, marsh marigolds, Solomon’s seal, Shin-Leaf (_Pyrola rotundifolia_), liverwort, wild briar-roses, lambkill, blue lobelias, Labrador tea, yellow loosestrife, blue-fringed gentians, innumerable ferns, the spikes of the Tall-Green Orchis, plants of the Round-Leaved Orchis, the Pink Moccasin-Flower, and rarely the beautiful orchid, _Arethusa bulbosa_—all of these conspire to make the region a wilderness of beauty.

On an excursion to Thompson’s Brook, June 19th, near Meyers’s Sugar-Bush, I collected ferns and iris. As I descended to the hemlocks, near the waterfalls, I stumbled upon the late plants of the Showy Orchis (_Orchis spectabilis_), in bloom—which were fully two weeks past the regular flowering date. They had faded in the hills of Mosholu on May 19th.

I had heard of Wash-Tub Brook for years, and on July 5th started off to explore the valley and the cliffs of Gregor Rocks above North Pownal. A lime-rock ridge runs from the base of Mount Anthony southeasterly to the Glebe in Witch Hollow region. The soil of the latter is principally black slate, with outcropping boulders of marble and lime-rock. In 1899, Mr. W. W. Eggleston of Rutland had visited this valley, and reported the rare Rue-Wall Spleenwort and the Purple-stemmed Cliff-Brakes growing abundantly on Gregor Rocks. I followed his path of cliff-climbing, as nearly as possible. Now that the orchid season was practically ended, I was giving my attention to hunting ferns, and I knew I should find them among the lime-rock cliffs. I had recently collected the Walking Fern in its native haunts. I proceeded up the valley of Wash-Tub Brook, passing the limestone mills northward, toward Mount Anthony and Peckham’s Hollow. Another stream, known as Hemlock Brook, flows down from the eastern slopes of Perkins’ Hill, and joins the Wash-Tub stream near the lime crushers. All the streams in this western corner of Pownal flow to the Hoosac River, while the streams from the northern summits of the Dome and Mount Œta flow northward to the Walloomsac.

[Illustration: =The Gregor Rocks, Hoosac Valley, from Pownal Centre, Vermont.=]

For the greater part of the valley, Wash-Tub Brook flows through open pasture lands. The bed is broad and shallow, strewn with numerous small lime-rock boulders drifted down from the hills with the floods of spring. The larger boulders wear scars and dimpled erosions of the glacial period. I took time to explore the ledges above, where the depressions reveal the terraces of an ancient lake. The prevailing evergreen trees here appear to be hemlock and cedar—the American _Arbor Vitæ_—whose roots cling to the cliffs, their green spires lending a touch of coloring to the bare-faced walls.

I saw from the banks here the distant pot-hole formations in the brook, from which the stream had taken its name. As I approached these marble basins, I found three in succession—one above the other—following the course of the stream—a narrow passage eroded through crystalline marble and limestone. The first or lowermost one was like a small lakelet overflowing its brim. The second one was a typical pot-hole, revolving its stones in its whirling waters. The bowl was about six feet deep, of a circular—or rather elliptical form, about twenty-six feet in circumference. The stream entered through the middle of the northern rim, and had eroded a spout-like gutter, causing the water to flow in a rapid, seething manner as if poured into the basin below. Here the greenish water boiled and whirled, finally with an added force leaping forth through a deep spout over the lower rim of the pot, carrying with it small stones and marble dust—the lower rim thus being worn away. As the bowl becomes deeper, layers of rock will be cracked and broken, until finally the pot-hole formation will be destroyed. The upper or third basin is located in the harder portion of the lime and marble bed-rock, portions of the marble being highly polished. The marble brook-bed glittered in the noonday sunshine. Pot-holes are formed originally by a boulder, which—carried in the currents of a stream—lodges in a depression of the bed-rock. It bores gradually into its resting place, until, in the course of ages, it has worn the walls of its basin into a deep hollow, at the same time wearing itself away, at last being carried off as a pebble. It may be that these holes are sometimes formed in a slightly different way. Dimples and fissures often occur in rocks, and if the water and pebbles circle about these cracks they probably eat down through the soft layers of rock, and thus loosen a revolving stone from the bed-rock itself. It would then fit the pot-hole closely for ages, revolving as the currents become forceful in freshets. The pot-holes along the granite ridges in Bronx Park, New York City, as well as on the Canaan Hills—nearly one thousand feet above the Merrimac and Connecticut river-beds,—reveal the erstwhile revolving stones now motionless in their basins.

[Illustration: =The Pot-Hole of Wash-Tub Brook, Pownal, Vermont, Showing the Stream Whirling through its Basin.=

“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”—THOREAU.]

After remaining in the region of the Wash-Tubs an hour or more, I followed down the lateral moraine or wooded ridge along the stream, which became rocky in the heart of the hemlocks. Upon a broad table-like rock, I found a large mat of Walking Ferns. It appeared about four feet square, and contained the most luxuriant plants I have ever seen or expect to see. I placed several in my vasculum, and descended to the stream, hastening on toward the village. Here I met an old gray-haired man—the inn-keeper for the mill laborers. He recognized my botanizing outfit, and remarked that Mr. Eggleston had passed through the town in 1899. He directed me to the Gregor Rocks, above the village, and thus I found the path winding around the northern brow of these lime-rock cliffs.