Spring notes from Tennessee

Throughout my stay in Chattanooga I looked often and with desire at a long, flat-topped, perpendicular-sided, densely wooded mountain, beyond the Tennessee River. Its name was Walden's Ridge, I was told; the top of it was eighty miles long and ten or twelve miles wide; if I wanted a bit of wild country, that was the place for me. Was it accessible? I asked. And was there any reasonable way of living there? Oh yes; carriages ran every afternoon from the city, and there were several small hotels on the mountain.

So it happened that I went to Walden's Ridge for my last week in Tennessee, and have ever since thanked my stars-as New England Christians used to say, in my boyhood-for giving me the good wine at the end of the feast.

The wine, it is true, was a little too freely watered. I went up the mountain in a rain, and came down again in a rain, and of the seven intervening days five were showery. The showers, mostly with thunder and lightning, were of the sort that make an umbrella ridiculous, and my jaunts, as a rule, took me far from shelter. Yet I had little to complain of. Now and then I was put to my trumps, as it were; my walk was sometimes grievously abbreviated, and my pace uncomfortably hurried, but by one happy accident and another I always escaped a drenching. Worse than the water that fell-worse, and not to be escaped, even by accident--was that which saturated the atmosphere, making every day a dog-day, and the week a seven-day sweat. And then, as if to even the account, on the last night of my stay I was kept awake for hours shivering with cold; and in the morning, after putting on all the clothing I could wear, and breakfasting in a snowstorm, I rode down the mountain in a state suggestive of approaching congelation. "My feet are frozen, I know they are," said the lady who sat beside me in the wagon; but she was mistaken.

This sudden drop in the temperature seemed to be a trial even to the natives. As we drove into Chattanooga, it was impossible not to smile at the pinched and woebegone appearance of the colored people. What had they to do with weather that makes a man hurry? And the next morning, when an enterprising, bright-faced white boy ran up to me with a "'Times,' sir? Have a 'Times'?" I fear he quite misapprehended the more or less quizzical expression which I am sure came into my face. I was looking at his black woolen mittens, and thinking how well he was mothered. It was the 19th of May; for at least three weeks, to my own knowledge, the city had been sweltering under the hottest of midsummer heats,-94° in the shade, for example; and now, mittens and overcoats!

I should be sorry to exaggerate, or leave a false impression. In this day of literary conscientiousness, when writers of fiction itself are truth-tellers first, and story-tellers afterwards,-if at all,-it behooves mere tourists and naturalists to speak as under oath. Be it confessed, then, that the foregoing paragraphs, though true in every word, are not to be taken too seriously. If the weather, "the dramatic element in scenery," happened not to suit the convenience of a naturally selfish man, now ten times more selfish than usual-as is the rule-because he was on his annual vacation, it does not follow that it was essentially bad. The rains were needed, the heat was to have been expected, and the cold, unseasonable and exceptional, was not peculiar to Tennessee. As for the snow, it was no more than I have seen before now, even in Massachusetts,-a week or two earlier in the month; and it lent such a glory to the higher Alleghanies, as we passed them on our way homeward, that I might cheerfully have lain shivering for two nights in that unplastered bedroom, with its window that no man could shut, rather than miss the spectacle. Eastern Tennessee, I have no doubt, is a most salubrious country; properly recommended by the medical fraternity as a refuge for consumptive patients. If to me its meteorological fluctuations seemed surprisingly wide and sudden, it was perhaps because I had been brought up in the equable climate of New England. It would be unfair to judge the world in general by that favored spot.

The road up the mountain-the "new road," as it is called-is a notable piece of work, done, I was told, by the county chain-gangs. The pleasure of the ascent, which naturally would have been great, was badly diminished by the rain, which made it necessary to keep the sides of the wagon down; but I was fortunate in my driver. At first he seemed a stolid, uncommunicative body, and when we came to the river I made sure he could not read. As we drove upon the bridge, where straight before his eyes was a sign forbidding any one to drive or ride over the bridge at a pace faster than a walk, under a penalty of five dollars for each offense, he whipped up his horse and his mule (the mule the better horse of the two), and they struck into a trot. Halfway across we met another wagon, and its driver too had let his horses out. Illiteracy must be pretty common in these parts, I said to myself. But whatever my driver's educational deficiencies, it did not take long to discover that in his own line he was a master. He could hit the ear of his mule with the end of his whip with a precision that was almost startling. In fact, it was startling-to the mule. For my own part, as often as he drew back his hand and let fly the lash, my eye was glued to the mule's right ear in spite of myself. Had my own ears been endowed with life and motion, instead of fastened to my head like blocks of wood, I think they too would have twitched. I wondered how long the man had practiced his art. He appeared to be not more than forty-five years old. Perhaps he came of a race of drivers, and so began life with some hereditary advantages. At all events, he was a specialist, with the specialist's motto, "This one thing I do."

We were hardly off the bridge and in the country before I began plying him with questions about this and that, especially the wayside trees. He answered promptly and succinctly, and turned out to be a man who had kept his eyes open, and, better still, knew how to say, "No, suh," as well as, "Yes, suh." (There is no mark in the dictionaries to indicate the percussive brevity of the vowel sound in "suh" as he pronounced it.) The big tupelo he recognized as the "black-gum." "But isn't it ever called 'sour-gum'?" "No, suh." He knew but one kind of tupelo, as he knew but one kind of "ellum." There were many kinds of oaks, some of which he named as we passed them. This botanical catechism presently waked up the only other passenger in the wagon, a modest girl of ten or twelve years. She too, it appeared, had some acquaintance with trees. I had asked the driver if there were no long-leaved pines hereabout. "No, suh," he said. "But I think I saw some at Chickamauga the other day," I ventured. (It was the only place I did see them, as well as I remember.) "Yes, sir," put in the girl, "there are a good many there." "Good for you!" I was ready to say. It was a pretty rare schoolgirl who, after visiting a battlefield, could tell what kind of pines grow on it. Persimmons? Yes, indeed, the girl had eaten them. There was a tree by the fence. Had I never eaten them? She seemed to pity me when I said "No," but I fancied she would have preferred to see me begin with one a little short of ripe.

As for the birds of Walden's Ridge, the driver said, there were partridges, pheasants, and turkeys. He had seen ravens, also, but only in winter, he thought, and never in flocks. His brother had once shot one. About smaller birds he could not profess to speak. By and by he stopped the carriage. "There's a bird now," he said, pointing with his whip. "What do you call that?" It was a summer tanager, I told him, or summer redbird. Did he know another redbird, with black wings and tail? Yes, he had seen it; that was the male, and this all-red one was the female. Oh no, I explained; the birds were of different species, and the females in both cases were yellow. He did not insist,-it was a case of a driver and his fare; but he had always been told so, he said, and I do not flatter myself that I convinced him to the contrary. It is hard to believe that one man can be so much wiser than everybody else. A Massachusetts farmer once asked me, I remember, if the night-hawk and the whippoorwill were male and female of the same bird. I answered, of course, that they were not, and gave, as I thought, abundant reason why such a thing could not be possible. But I spoke as a scribe. "Well," remarked the farmer, when I had finished my story, "some folks say they be, but I guess they ain't."

With such converse, then, we beguiled the climb to the "Brow,"-the top of the cliffs which rim the summit of the mountain, and give it from below a fortified look,-and at last, after an hour's further drive through the dripping woods, came to the hotel at which I was to put up-or with which I was to put up-during my stay on the Ridge.

I had hardly taken the road, the next morning, impatient to see what this little world on a mountain top was like, before I came to a lovely brook making its devious course among big boulders with much pleasant gurgling, in the shadow of mountain laurel and white azalea,-a place highly characteristic of Walden's Ridge, as I was afterwards to learn. Just now, naturally, there was no stopping so near home, though a Kentucky warbler, with his cool, liquid song, did his best to beguile me; and I kept on my way, past a few houses, a tiny box of a post-office, a rude church, and a few more houses, till just beyond the last one the road dropped into the forest again, as if for good. And there, all at once I seemed to be in New Hampshire. The land fell away sharply, and at one particular point, through a vista, the forest could be seen sloping down on either side to the gap, beyond which, miles away, loomed a hill, and then, far, far in the distance, high mountains dim with haze. It was like a note of sublimity in a poem that till now had been only beautiful.

From the bottom of the valley came a sound of running water, and between me and the invisible stream a chorus of olive-backed thrushes were singing,-the same simple and hearty strains that, in June and July, echo all day long through the woods of the Crawford Notch. The birds were on their way from the far South, and were happy to find themselves in so homelike a place. Then, suddenly, amid the golden voices of the thrushes, I caught the wiry notes of a warbler. They came from the treetops in the valley, and-so I prided myself upon guessing-belonged to a cerulean warbler, a bird of which I had seen my first and only specimen a week before, on Lookout Mountain. Down the steep hillside I scrambled,-New Hampshire clean forgotten,-and was just bringing my glass into play when the fellow took wing, and began singing at the very point I had just left. I hastened back; he flew again, farther up the hill, and again I put myself out of breath with pursuing him. Again and again he sang, now in this tree, now in that, but there was no getting sight of him. The trees should have been shorter, or the bird larger. Straight upward I gazed, till the muscles of my neck cried for mercy. At last I saw him, flitting amid the dense foliage, but so far above me, and so exactly between me and the sun, that I might as well not have seen him at all.

It was a foolish half-hour. The bird, as I afterwards discovered, was nothing but a blue yellow-back, with an original twist to his song. In Massachusetts, I should not have listened to it twice, but on new hunting-grounds a man is bound to look for new game; else what would be the use of traveling? It was a foolish half-hour, I say; but I wish some moralist would explain, in a manner not inconsistent with the dignity of human nature, how it happens that foolish half-hours are commonly so much more enjoyable at the time, and so much pleasanter in the retrospect, than many that are more reasonably employed.

I swallowed my disappointment, and presently forgot it, for at the first turn in the road I found myself following the course of a brook or creek, between which and myself was a dense thicket of mountain laurel and rhododendron, with trees and other shrubs intermingled. The laurel was already in full bloom, while the rhododendrons held aloft clusters of gorgeous rose-purple buds, a few of which, the middle ones of the cluster, were just bursting into flower. Here was beauty of a new order,-such wealth and splendor of color in surroundings so romantic. And the place, besides, was alive with singing birds: hooded warblers, Kentucky warblers, a Canadian warbler, a black-throated blue, a black-throated green, a blue yellow-back, scarlet tanagers, wood pewees, wood thrushes, a field sparrow (on the hillside beyond) a cardinal, a chat, a bunch of white-throated sparrows, and who could tell what else? It was an exciting moment. Luckily, a man can look and listen both at once. Here was a fringe-tree, a noble specimen, hung with creamy-white plumes; here was a magnolia, with big leaves and big flowers; and here was a flowering dogwood, not to be put out of countenance in any company; but especially, here were the rhododendrons! And all the while, deep in the thickest of the bushes, some unknown bird was singing a strange, breathless jumble of a song, note tripping over note,-like an eager churchman with his responses, I kept saying to myself, with no thought of disrespect to either party. It cost me a long vigil and much patient coaxing to make the fellow out, and he proved to be merely a Wilson's blackcap, after all; but he was the only bird of his kind that I saw in Tennessee.

On this first visit I did not get far beyond the creek, through the bed of which the road runs, with a single log for foot-passengers. I had spent at least an hour in going a hundred rods, and it was already drawing near dinner time. But I returned to the spot that very afternoon, and half a dozen times afterward. So poor a traveler am I, so ill fitted to explore a new country. Whenever nothing in particular offered itself, why, it was always pretty down at Falling Water Creek. There I saw the rhododendrons come into exuberant bloom, and there I oftenest see them in memory, though I found them elsewhere in greater abundance, and in a setting even more romantic.

More romantic, perhaps, but hardly more beautiful. I remember, just beyond the creek, a bank where sweet bush (Calycanthus), wild ginger (Asarum), rhododendron, laurel, and plenty of trailing arbutus (the last now out of flower) were growing side by side,-a rare combination of beauty and fragrance. And within a few rods of the same spot I sat down more than once to take a long look at a cross-vine covering a dead hemlock. The branches of the tree, shortening regularly to the top, were draped heavily with gray lichens, while the vine, keeping mostly near the trunk and climbing clean to the tip,-fifty feet or more, as I thought,-was hung throughout with large, orange-red, gold-lined bells. Their numbers were past guessing. Here and there a spray of them swung lightly from the end of a branch, as if inviting the breeze to lend them motion and a voice. The sight was worth going miles to see, and yet I passed it three times before it caught my eye, so full were the woods of things to look at. After all, is it a poor traveler who turns again and again into the same path? Whether is better, to read two good books once, or one good book twice?

A favorite shorter walk, at odd minutes,-before breakfast and between showers,-was through the woods for a quarter of a mile to a small clearing and a cabin. On a Sunday afternoon I ventured to pass the gate and make a call upon my neighbors. The doors of the house stood open, but a glance inside showed that there was no one there, and I walked round it, inspecting the garden,-corn, beans, and potatoes coming on,-till, just as I was ready to turn back into the woods, I descried a man and woman on the hillside not far away; the man leading a mule, and the woman picking strawberries. At sight of a stranger the woman fell behind, but the man kept on to the house, greeted me politely, and invited me to be seated under the hemlock, where two chairs were already placed. After tying the mule he took the other chair, and we fell into talk about the weather, the crops, and things in general. When the wife finally appeared, I rose, of course; but she went on in silence and entered the house, while the husband said, "Oh, keep your seat." We continued our conversation till the rain began to fall. Then we picked up our chairs and followed the woman inside. She sat in the middle of the room (young, pretty, newly married, and Sunday-dressed), but never once opened her lips. Her behavior was in strict accordance with local etiquette, I was afterward assured (as if all etiquette were not local); but though I admire feminine modesty as much as any man, I cannot say that I found this particular manifestation of it altogether to my liking. Silence is golden, no doubt, and gold is more precious than silver, but in cases of this figurative sort I profess myself a bimetallist. A little silver, I say; enough for small change, at any rate; and if we can have a pretty free coinage, why, so much the better, though as to that, it must be admitted, a good deal depends upon the "image and superscription." However, my hostess followed her lights, and reserved her voice-soft and musical let us hope-for her husband's ear.

They had not lived in the house very long, he told me, and he did not know how many years the land had been cleared. There was a fair amount of game in the woods,-turkeys, squirrels, pheasants, and so on,-and in winter the men did considerable hunting. Formerly there were a good many deer, but they had been pretty well killed off. Turkeys still held out. They were gobbling now. His father had been trying for two or three weeks, off and on, to shoot a certain old fellow who had several hens with him down in the valley. His father could call with his mouth better than with any "caller," but so far the bird had been too sharp for him. The son laughed good-naturedly when I confessed to an unsportsmanlike sympathy with the gobbler.

The cabin, built of hewn logs, with clay in the chinks, was neatly furnished, with beds in two corners of the one room, a stone chimney, two doors directly opposite each other, and no window. The doors, it is understood, are always to be open, for ventilation and light. Such is the custom; and custom is nowhere more powerful than in small rustic communities. If a native, led away by his wife, perhaps, puts a window into his new cabin, the neighbors say, "Oh, he is building a glass house, isn't he?" It must be an effeminate woman, they think, who cannot do her cooking and sewing by the light of the door. None the less, in a climate where snow is possible in the middle of May, such a Spartan arrangement must sometimes be found a bit uncomfortable by persons not to the manner born. A preacher confided to me that in his pastoral calls he had once or twice made bold to push to a door directly at his back, when the wind was cold; but the innovation was ill received, and the inmates of the house, doubtless without wishing to hurt their minister's feelings,-since he had meant no harm, to be sure, but was simply unused to the ways of the world,-speedily found some excuse for rectifying his mistake. Probably there is no corner of the world where the question of fresh air and draughts is not available for purposes of moral discipline.

Beside the path to the cabin, on the 13th of May, was a gray-cheeked thrush, a very gray specimen, sitting motionless in the best of lights. "Look at me," he seemed to say. "I am no olive-back. My cheeks are not sallow." On the same day, here and in another place, I saw white-throated sparrows. Their presence at this late hour was a great surprise, and suggested the possibility of their breeding somewhere in the Carolina mountains, though I am not aware that such an occurrence has ever been recorded. Another recollection of this path is of a snow-white milkweed (Asclepias variegata),-white with the merest touch of purple to set it off,-for the downright elegance of which I was not in the least prepared. The queen of all milkweeds, surely.

After nightfall the air grew loud with the cries of batrachians and insects, an interesting and novel chorus. On my first evening at the hotel I was loitering up the road, with frequent auditory pauses, thinking how full the world is of unseen creatures which find their day only after the sun goes down, when in a woody spot I heard behind me a sound of footsteps. A woman was close at my heels, fetching a pail of water from the spring. I remarked upon the many voices. She answered pleasantly. It was the big frogs that I heard, she reckoned.

"Do you have whippoorwills here?" I asked.

"Plenty of 'em," she answered, "plenty of 'em."

"Do you hear them right along the road?"

"Yes, sir; oh yes."

We had gone hardly a rod further before we exclaimed in the same breath, "There is one now!"

I inquired if there was another bird here, something like the whippoorwill, meaning the chuck-will's-widow. But she said no; she knew of but one.

"How early does the whippoorwill get here?" said I.

"Pretty early," she answered.

"By the first of April, should you say?"

"Yes, sir, I think about then. I know the timber is just beginning to put out when they begin to holler."

This mannerly treatment of a stranger was more Christian-like than the stately silence of my lady of the cabin, it seemed to me. I liked it better, at all events. I had learned nothing, perhaps; but unless a man is far gone in philosophy he need not feel bound to increase in wisdom every time a neighbor speaks to him; and anyhow, that expression about the "putting out of the timber" had given me pleasure. Hearing it thus was better than finding it upon a page of Stevenson, or some other author whose business in life is the picking of right words. Let us have some silver, I repeat. I am ready to believe, what I have somewhere read, that men will have to give account not only for every idle word, but for every idle silence.

The summit of the Ridge, as soon as one leaves its precipitous rocky edge,-the Brow, so called,-is simply an indefinite expanse of gently rolling country, thin-soiled, but well watered, and covered with fine open woods, rambling through which the visitor finds little to remind him of his elevation above the world. I heard a resident speak of going to the "top of the mountain," however, and on inquiry learned that a certain rocky eminence, two miles, more or less, from Fairmount (the little "settlement" where I was staying), went by that name, and was supposed to be the highest point of the Ridge. My informant kindly made me a rough map of the way thither, and one morning I set out in that direction. It would be shameful to live for a week on the "summit" of a mountain, and not once go to the "top."

The glory of Walden's Ridge, as compared with Lookout Mountain,-so the dwellers there say,-is its streams and springs; and my morning path soon brought me to the usual rocky brook bordered with mountain laurel, holly, and hemlock. To my New England eyes it was an odd circumstance, the hemlocks growing always along the creeks in the valley bottoms. Beyond this point I passed an abandoned cabin,-no other house in sight,-and by and by a second one, near which, in the garden (better worth preserving than the house, it appeared), a woman and two children were at work. Yes, the woman said, I was on the right path. I had only to keep a straight course, and I should bring up at the "top of the mountain." A little farther, and my spirits rose at the sight of a circular, sedgy, woodland pond, such a place as I had not seen in all this Chattanooga country. It ought to yield something new for my local ornithological list, which up to this time included ninety species, and not one of them a water-bird. I did my best, beating round the edge and "squeaking," but startled nothing rarer than a hooded warbler and a cardinal grosbeak.

Next I traversed a long stretch of unbroken oak woods, with single tall pines interspersed; and then all at once the path turned to the right, and ran obliquely downhill to a clearing in which stood a house,-not a cabin,-with a garden, orchard trees, and beehives. This should be the German shoemaker's, I thought, looking at my map. If so, I was pretty near the top, though otherwise there was no sign of it; and if I had made any considerable ascent, it had been as children increase in stature,-and as the good increase in goodness,-unconsciously. A woman of some years was in the garden, and at my approach came up to the fence,-a round-faced, motherly body. Yes, the top of the mountain was just beyond. I could not miss it.

"You do not live here?" she asked.

No, I explained; I was a stranger on the Ridge,-a stranger from Boston.

"From Washington?"

"No, from Boston."

"Oh! from Boston!-Massachusetts!-Oh-h-h!"

She would go part way with me, she said, lest I should miss the path. Perhaps she wished to show some special hospitality to a man from Massachusetts; or possibly she thought I must be more in danger of getting bewildered, being so far from home. But I could not think of troubling her. Was there a spring near by, where I could drink?

"I have water in the house," she answered.

"But isn't there a creek down in the valley ahead?"

Oh yes, there was a creek; but had I anything to drink out of? I thanked her. Yes, I had a cup. "My husband will be at home by the time you come back," she said, as I started on, and I promised to call.

The scene at the brook, halfway between the German's house and the top, would of itself have paid me for my morning's jaunt. I stood on a boulder in mid-current, in the shadow of overhanging trees, and drank it in. Such rhododendrons and laurel, now in the perfection of their beauty! One rhododendron bush was at least ten feet high, and loaded with blooms. Another lifted its crown of a dozen rose-purple clusters amid the dark foliage of a hemlock. A magnolia-tree stood near; but though it was much taller than the laurel or the rhododendron, and had much larger flowers, it made little show beside them. Birds were singing on all hands, and numbers of gay-colored butterflies flitted about, sipping here and there at a blossom. I remember especially a fine tiger swallow-tail; the only one I saw in Tennessee, I believe. I remember, too, how well the rhododendron became him. Here, as in many other places, the laurel was nearly white; a happy circumstance, as it and the rhododendron went the more harmoniously together. Even in this high company, some tufts of cinnamon fern were not to be overlooked; the fertile cinnamon-brown fronds were now at their loveliest, and showed as bravely here, I thought, as in the barest of Massachusetts swamp-lands.

A few rods more, up a moderate slope, and I was at the top of the mountain,-a wall of out-cropping rocks, falling off abruptly on the further side, and looking almost like an artificial rampart. Beyond me, to my surprise, I heard the hum of cicadas,-seventeen-year locusts,-a sound of which the lower country had for some time been full, but of which, till this moment, I had heard nothing on the Ridge.

As for the prospect, it was far reaching, but only in one direction, and through openings among the trees. Directly before me, some hundreds of feet below, was a piece of road, with a single cabin and a barn; and much farther away were other cabins, each with its private clearing. Elsewhere the foreground was an unbroken forest. For some time I could not distinguish the Ridge itself from the outlying world. Mountains and hills crowded the hazy horizon, range beyond range. Moving along the rocks, I found a vista through which Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain were visible. Another change, and a stretch of the Tennessee River came into sight, and, beyond it, Missionary Ridge with its settlements and its two observatories. Evidently I was considerably above the level of the Brow; but whether this was really the top of the mountain-reached, in some mysterious way, without going uphill-was more than I could say.[2]

Nor did it matter. I was glad to be there. It was a pleasant place and a pleasant hour, with an oak root for a seat, and never an insect to trouble me. That, by the way, was true of all those Tennessee forests,-when I was there, I mean; from what I heard, the ticks and jiggers must be bad enough later in the season. As men do at such times,-for human nature is of noble origin, and feels no surprise at being well treated,-I took my immunity as a matter of course, and only realized how I had been favored when I got back to Massachusetts, where, on my first visit to the woods, I was fairly driven out by swarms of mosquitoes.

The shoemaker was at home when I reached his house on my return, and at the urgent invitation of himself and his wife I joined them on the piazza for a bit of neighborly chat. I found him a smallish man, not German in appearance, but looking, I thought, like Thoreau, only grown a little older. He had been on Walden's Ridge for fifteen years. Before that he was in South Carolina, but the yellow fever came along and made him feel like getting out. Yes, this was a healthy country. He had nothing to complain of; he was sixty-two years old and his doctors' bills had never amounted to "five dollar."

"Do you like living here?" I asked his wife.

"No," she answered promptly; "I never did. But then," she added, "we can't help it. If you own something, you know, you have to stay."

The author of Walden would have appreciated that remark. There was no shoemaking to be done here, the man said, his nearest neighbor being half a mile distant through the woods; and there was no clover, so that his bees did not do very well; and the frost had just killed all his peach-trees; but when I asked if he never felt homesick for Germany, the answer came like a pistol shot,-"No."

I inquired about a cave, of which I had heard reports. Yes, it was a good cave, they said; I could easily find it. But their directions conveyed no very clear idea to my mind, and by and by the woman began talking to her husband in German. "She is telling him he ought to go with me and show me the way," I said to myself; and the next moment she came back to English. "He will go with you," she said. I demurred, but he protested that he could do it as well as not. "Take up a stick; you might see a snake," his wife called after him, as we left the house. He smiled, but did not follow her advice, though I fancied he would have done so had she gone along with us. A half-mile or so through the pathless woods brought us to the cave, which might hold a hundred persons, I thought. The dribbling "creek" fell over it in front. Then the man took me to my path, pointed my way homeward, and, with a handshake (the silver lining of which was not refused, though I had been troubled with a scruple), bade me good-by. First, however, he told me that if I found any one in Boston who wanted to buy a place on Walden's Ridge, he would sell a part of his or the whole of it. I remember him most kindly, and would gladly do him a service. If any reader, having a landed investment in view, should desire my intervention in the premises, I am freely at his command; only let him bear in mind the terms of the deed: "If you own something, you know, you have to stay."

Fairmount, as has already been said, is but a clearing in the forest. Instead of a solitary cabin, as elsewhere, there are perhaps a dozen or two of cabins and houses scattered along the road, which emerges from the woods at one end of the settlement, and, after a mile or so in the sun, drops into them again at the other end. The glory of the place, and the reason of its being, as I suppose, is a chalybeate spring in a woody hollow before the post-office. There may be a shop of some kind, also, but memory retains no such impression.

One building, rather larger than most of its neighbors, and apparently unoccupied, I looked at more than once with a measure of that curiosity which is everywhere the stranger's privilege. It sat squarely on the road, and boasted a sort of portico or piazza,-it puzzled me what to call it,-but there was no vestige of a chimney. One day a ragged, bright-faced boy met me at the right moment, and I asked, "Did some one use to live in that house?" "That?" said he, in a tone I shall never forget. "That's a barn. That over there is the dwelling." My ignorance was fittingly rebuked, and I had no spirit to inquire about the piazza. Probably it was nothing but a lean-to. Even in my humiliation, however, it pleased me to hear what I should have called that good literary word "dwelling" on such lips. A Yankee boy might have said "dwelling-house," but no Yankee of any age, or none that I have ever known, would have said "dwelling," though he might have read the word in books a thousand times. I thought of a spruce colored waiter in Florida, who, when I asked him at breakfast how the day was likely to turn out, answered promptly, "I think it will be inclement." It may reasonably be counted among the minor advantages of travel that it enriches one's every-day vocabulary.

Another Fairmount building (an unmistakable house, this time) is memorable to me because on the doorstep, day after day, an old gentleman and a younger antagonist-they might have been grandfather and grandson-were playing checkers. "I hope you are beating the young fellow," I could not help saying once to the old gentleman. He smiled dubiously, and made some halting reply suggestive of resignation rather than triumph; and it came to me with a kind of pang, as I passed on, that if growing old is a bad business, as most of us think, it is perhaps an unfavorable symptom when a man finds himself, not out of politeness, but as a simple matter of course, taking sides with the aged.

Fairmounters, living in the woods, have no outlook upon the world. If they wish to see off, they must go to the Brow, which, by a stroller's guess, may be two miles distant. My first visit to it was the pleasanter-the more vacational, so to speak-for being an accident. I sauntered aimlessly down the road, past the scattered houses and orchards (the raising of early apples seemed to be a leading industry on the Ridge, though a Chattanooga gentleman had assured me that the principal crops were blackberries and rabbits), and almost before I knew it, was in the same delightful woods that had welcomed me wherever I had gone. And in the same woods the same birds were singing. My notes make particular record of hooded and Kentucky warblers, these being two of my newer acquaintances, as well as two of the commoner Ridge songsters; but I halted for some time, and with even a livelier interest, to listen to an old friend (no acquaintance, if you please),-a black-throated green warbler. It was one of the queerest of songs: a bar of five or six notes, uniform in pitch, and then at once, in perfect form and voice,-the voice being a main part of the music in the case of this warbler,-the familiar trees, trees, murmuring trees. Where could the fellow have picked up such a ditty? No doubt there was some story connected with it. Nothing is born of itself. A dozen years ago, in the Green Mountains,-at Bread-Loaf Inn,-I heard from the forest by the roadside a song utterly strange, and hastened in search of its author. After much furtive approach and diligent scanning of the foliage, I had the bird under my opera-glass,-a black-throated blue warbler! With my eye still upon him, he sang again and again, and the song bore no faintest resemblance to the kree, kree, kree, which all New England bird-lovers know as the work of Dendroica c?rulescens. In what private school he had been educated I have no idea; but I believe that every such extreme eccentricity goes back to something out of the common in the bird's early training.

I felt in no haste. Life is easy in the Tennessee mountains. A pile of lumber, newly unloaded near the road,-in the woods, of course,-offered a timely seat, and I took it. Some Chattanooga gentleman was planning a summer cottage for himself, I gathered. May he enjoy it for twenty years as much as I did for twenty minutes. Not far beyond, near a fork in the road, a man of twenty-five or thirty, a youth of sixteen or seventeen, and a small boy were playing marbles in a cabin yard. I interrupted the sport long enough to inquire which road I had better take. I was going nowhere in particular, I explained, and wanted simply a pleasant stroll. "Then I would go to the Brow, if I were you," said the man. "Keep a straight road. It isn't far." I thanked him, and with a cheery "Come on!" to his playmates he ran back, literally, to the ring. Yes, life is easy in the Tennessee mountains. It is not to be assumed, nevertheless, that the man was a do-nothing: probably he had struck work for a few minutes only; but, like a sensible player, he was enjoying the game while it lasted. Perhaps it is a certain inborn Puritanical industriousness, against which I have never found the courage effectually to rebel, that makes me look back upon this dooryard comedy as one of the brightest incidents of my Tennessee vacation. Fancy a Massachusetts farmer playing marbles at nine o'clock in the forenoon!

At that moment, it must be owned, a rebuke of idleness would have fallen with a poor grace from my Massachusetts lips. If the player of marbles had followed his questioner round the first turn, he would have seen him standing motionless beside a swamp, holding his head on one side as if listening,-though there was nothing to be heard,-or evoking ridiculous squeaking noises by sucking idiotically the back of his hand. Well, I was trying to find another bird, just as he was trying to knock another marble out of the ring.

The spot invited such researches,-a bushy swamp, quite unlike the dry woods and rocky woodland brooks which I had found everywhere else. I had seen my first cerulean warbler on Lookout Mountain, my first Cape May warbler on Cameron Hill, my first Kentucky warbler on Missionary Ridge, and my first blue-winged yellow warbler at the Chickamauga battlefield. If Walden was to treat me equally well, as in all fairness it ought, now was the time. Looking, listening, and squeaking were alike unrewarded, however, till I approached the same spot on my return. Then some bird sang a new song. I hoped it was a prothonotary warbler, a bird I had never seen, and about whose notes I knew nothing. More likely it was a Louisiana water-thrush, a bird I had seen, but had never heard sing. Whichever it was, alas, it speedily fell silent, and no beating of the bush proved of the least avail.

Meanwhile I had been to the Brow, where I had sat for an hour or more on the edge of the mountain, gazing down upon the world. The sky was clouded, but here and there were fugitive patches of sunshine, now on Missionary Ridge, now on the river, now glorifying the smoke of the city. Southward, just across the valley and over Chattanooga, was Lookout Mountain; eastward stretched Missionary Ridge, with many higher hills behind it; and more to the north, and far in the distance, loomed the Great Smoky Mountains, in all respects true to their name. The valley at my feet was beautiful beyond words: green forests interspersed with green clearings, lonely cabins, and bare fields of red earth. At the north, Walden's Ridge made a turn eastward, narrowing the valley, but without ending it. Chimney swifts were cackling merrily, and the air was full of the hum of seventeen-year locusts,-miles and miles of continuous sound. From somewhere far below rose the tinkle of cow-bells. Even on that cloudy and smoky day it was a glorious landscape; but it pleased me afterward to remember that the eye returned of itself again and again to a stretch of freshly green meadow along a slender watercourse,-a valley within the valley. Of all the fair picture, that was the most like home.

Meanwhile there was no forgetting that undiscovered stranger in the swamp. Whoever he was, he must be made to show himself; and the next day, when the usual noonday deluge was past, I looked at the clouds, and said: "We shall have another, but in the interval I can probably reach the Brow. There I will take shelter on the piazza of an unoccupied cottage, and, when the rain is over, go back to the swamp, see my bird, and thence return home." So it turned out-in part. The clouds hurried me, but I reached the Brow just in season, climbed the cottage fence, the gate being padlocked, and, thoroughly heated as I was, paced briskly to and fro on the piazza in a chilling breeze for an hour or more, the flood all the while threatening to fall, and the thunder shaking the house. There was plenty to look at, for the cottage faced the Great Smokies, and though we were under the blackest of clouds, the landscape below was largely in the sun. The noise of the locusts was incessant. Nothing but the peals of thunder kept it out of my ears.

So far, then, my plans had prospered; but to find the mysterious bird,-that was not so easy. The swamp was silent, and I was at once so cold and so hot, and so badly under the weather already, that I dared not linger.

In the woods, nevertheless, I stopped long enough to enjoy the music of a master cardinal,-a bewitching song, and, as I thought, original: birdy, birdy, repeated about ten times in the sweetest of whistles, and then a sudden descent in the pitch, and the same syllables over again. At that instant, a Carolina wren, as if stirred to rivalry, sprang into a bush and began whistling cherry, cherry, cherry at his loudest and prettiest. It was a royal duet. The cardinal was in magnificent plumage, and a scarlet tanager near by was equally handsome. If the tanager could whistle like the cardinal, our New England woods would have a bird to brag of.

Not far beyond these wayside musicians I came upon a boy sitting beside a wood-pile, with his saw lying on the ground. "It is easier to sit down than to saw wood, isn't it?" said I. Possibly he was unused to such aphoristic modes of speech. He took time to consider. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, sir." The answer was all-sufficient. We spoke from experience, both of us; and between men who know, whatever the matter in hand, disagreement is impossible and amplification needless.

Three days later-my last day on the Ridge-I had better luck at the swamp. The stranger was singing on the nearer edge as I approached, and I had simply to draw near and look at him,-a Louisiana water-thrush. He sang, and I listened; and farther along, at the little bridge where I had first heard the song, another like him was in tune. The strain, as warbler songs go ("water-thrushes" being not thrushes, but warblers), is rather striking,-clear, pretty loud, of about ten notes, the first pair of which are longest and best. I speak of what I heard, and give, of course, my own impression. Audubon pronounces the notes "as powerful and mellow, and at times as varied," as those of the nightingale, and Wilson waxes almost equally enthusiastic in his praise of the "exquisitely sweet and expressive voice." Here, as in Florida, I was interested to perceive how instantly the bird's appearance and carriage distinguished it from its Northern relative, although the descriptions of the two species, as given in books, sound confusingly alike. It is matter for thankfulness, perhaps, that language is not yet so all-expressive as to render individual eyesight superfluous.

I kept on to the Brow, and some time afterward was at Mabbitt's Spring, quenching my thirst with a draught of liquid iron rust, when a third songster of the same kind struck up his tune. The spring, spurting out of the rock in a slender jet, is beside the same stream-Little Falling Water-that makes through the swamp; and along its banks, it appeared, the water-thrushes were at home. I was glad to have heard the famous singer, but my satisfaction was not without alloy. Walden, after all, had failed to show me a new bird, though it had given me a new song.

The most fatiguing, and perhaps the most interesting of my days on the Ridge was the one day in which I did not travel on foot. Passing through the village, on my return from one of my earlier visits to Falling Water, I stopped a nice-looking man (if he will pardon the expression, copied from my notes), driving a horse with a pair of clothes-line reins. He had an air of being at home, and naturally I took him for a native. Would he tell me something about the country, especially about the roads, so that I might improve my scanty time to the best advantage? Very gladly, he answered. He had walked and driven over the mountain a good deal, surveying, and if I would call at his house, a short distance down the road,-the house with the big barn,-he would make me a rough map, such as would answer my purpose. At the same time he mentioned two or three shorter excursions which I ought not to miss; and when I had thanked him for his kindness, he gathered up the reins and drove on. Intending no disrespect to the inhabitants of the Ridge, I may perhaps be allowed to say that I was considerably impressed by a certain unexpected propriety, and even elegance, of diction, on the part of my new acquaintance. I remember in particular his description of a pleasant cold spring as being situated not far from the "confluence" of two streams. Con-fluens, I thought, flowing together. Having always something else to do, I omitted to call at his house, and one day, when we met again in the road, I apologized for my neglect, and asked another favor. He was familiar with the country, and kept a horse. Could he not spare a day to take me about? If he thought this proposal a bit presumptuous, courtesy restrained him from letting the fact be seen, and, after a few minutes of deliberation,-his hands being pretty full just then, he explained,-he promised to call for me two mornings later, at seven o'clock. We would take a luncheon along, and make a day of it.

He appeared at the gate in due season, and in a few minutes we were driving over a road new to me, but through the same spacious oak woods to which I had grown accustomed. We went first to Burnt Cabin Spring, one of the famous chalybeate springs of the mountain,-a place formerly frequented by picnic parties, but now, to all appearance, fallen into neglect. We stretched our legs, drank of the water, admired the flowers and ferns, talking all the while (it was here that my companion told a story of a young theologian from Grant University, who, in a solemn discourse, spoke repeatedly of Jacob as having "euchred his brother out of his birthright"), and then, while a "pheasant" drummed near by, took our places again in the buggy.

Another stage, still through the oak woods, and we were at Signal Point, famous-in local tradition, at least-as the station from which General Sherman signaled encouragement to the Union army beleaguered in Chattanooga, in danger of starvation or surrender. I had looked at the bold, jutting crags from Lookout Mountain and elsewhere, and rejoiced at last to stand upon them.

It would have been delightful to spend a long day there, lying upon the cliffs and enjoying the prospect, which, without being so far-reaching as from Point Lookout, or even from the eastern brim of Walden, is yet extensive and surpassingly beautiful. The visitor is squarely above the river, which here, in the straitened valley between the Ridge and Raccoon Mountain, grows narrower and narrower till it rushes through the "Suck." Even at that elevation we could hear the roar of the rapids. A short distance above the Suck, and almost at our feet, lay Williams Island. A farmer's Eden it looked, with its broad, newly planted fields, and its house surrounded by out-buildings and orchard-trees. The view included Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and much else; but its special charm was its foreground, the part peculiar to itself,-the valley, the river, and Raccoon Mountain. Along the river-banks were small clearings, each with its one cabin, and generally a figure or two ploughing or planting. A man in a strangely long boat-a dugout, probably-was making his difficult way upstream with a paddle. The Tennessee, in the neighborhood of Chattanooga, at all events, is too swift for pleasure-boating. Seen from above, as I commonly saw it, it looked tranquil enough; but when I came down to its edge, now and then, the speed and energetic sweep of the smooth current laid fast hold upon me. From the mountains to the sea is a long, long journey, and no wonder the river felt in haste.

I had gone to Signal Point not as an ornithologist, but as a patriot and a lover of beauty; but, being there, I added one to my list of Tennessee birds,-a red-tailed hawk, one of the very few hawks seen in all my trip. Sailing below us, it displayed its rusty, diagnostic tail, and put its identity at once beyond question.

Our next start-far too speedy, for the day was short-was for Williams Point; but on our way thither we descended into the valley of Shoal Creek, down which, with the creek to keep it company, runs the old mountain road, now disused and practically impassable. Here we hitched the horse, and strolled downwards for perhaps half a mile. I was never in a lovelier spot. The mountain brook, laughing over the stones, is overhung with laurel and rhododendron, which in turn are overhung by precipitous rocks broken into all wild and romantic shapes, with here and there a cavern-"rock-house"-to shelter a score of travelers. The place was rich in ferns and other plants, which, unhappily, I had no time to examine, and all the particulars of which have faded out of my memory. We walked far enough to look over the edge of the mountain, and up to the Signal Point cliffs. If I could have stayed there two or three hours, it would have been a memorable season. As it was, the stroll was enlivened by one little adventure, at which I have laughed too many times ever to forget it.

I had been growing rapturous over the beauty of things, when my companion said, "There are some people whom it is no pleasure to take into places like this. They can't keep their eyes off the ground, they are so bitten with the fear of snakes." He was a few paces ahead of me, as he spoke, and the sentence was barely finished before he shouted, "Look at that huge snake!" and sprang forward to snatch up a stone. "Get a stick!" he cried. "Get a stick!" From his manner I took it for granted that the creature was a rattlesnake, and a glance at it, lying motionless among the stones beside the road, did not undeceive me. I turned hurriedly, looking for a stick, but somehow could not find one, and in a moment more was recalled by shouts of "Come and help me! It will get away from us!" It was a question of life and death, I thought, and I ran forward and began throwing stones. "Look out! Look out! You'll bury it!" cried my companion; but just then one of my shots struck the snake squarely in the head. "That's a good one!" exclaimed the other man, and, picking up a dead stick, he thrust it under the disabled creature and tossed it into the road. Then he bent over it, and, with a stone, pounded its head to a jelly. Such a fury as possessed him! He might have been bruising the head of Satan himself, as no doubt he was-in his mind; for my surveyor was also a preacher, as had already transpired.

"It isn't a venomous snake, is it?" I ventured to ask, when the work was done.

"Oh, I think not," and he pried open its jaws to look for its fangs.

"I don't generally kill innocent snakes," I ventured again, a little inopportunely, it must be confessed.

"Well, I do," said the preacher. "The very sight of a snake stirs my hatred to its depths."

After that it was natural to inquire whether he often saw rattlesnakes hereabouts. (The driver who brought me up the mountain had said that they were not common, but that I "wanted to look out sharp for them in the woods.") My companion had never seen one, he answered, but his wife had once killed one in their dooryard. Then, by way of cooling off, after the fervor of the conflict, he told me about a gentleman and his little boy, who, having come to spend a vacation on the Ridge, started out in the morning for a stroll. They were quickly back again, and the boy, quite out of breath, came running into the garden.

"Oh, Mr. M.," he cried, "we saw a rattlesnake, and papa fired off his pistol!"

"A rattlesnake! Where is it? What did it look like?"

"Why, we didn't see it, but we heard it."

"What was the noise like?" asked Mr. M., and he took a pencil from his pocket and began tapping on a log.

"That's it!" said the boy, "that's it!"

They had heard a woodpecker drilling for grubs,-or drumming for love,-whereupon the man had fired his pistol, and for them there was no more walking in the woods.

After our ramble along Shoal Creek we rested at the ford, near a brilliant show of laurel and rhododendron, and ate our luncheon to the music of the stream. I finished first, as my evil habit is, and was crossing the brook on natural stepping-stones when a bird-a warbler of some unknown kind-saluted me from the thicket. Making my companion a signal not to disturb us by driving into the stream, I gave myself up to discovering the singer; edging this way and that, while the fellow moved about also, always unseen, and sang again and again, now a louder song, now, with charming effect, a quieter and briefer one, till I was almost as badly beside myself as the preacher had been half an hour before. But my warfare was less successful than his, for, with all my pains, I saw not so much as a feather. There is nothing prettier than a jungle of laurel and rhododendron in full bloom, but there are many easier places in which to make out a bird.

Williams Point, which we reached on foot, after driving as near it as the roughness of the unfrequented road would comfortably allow, is not in itself equal to Signal Point, but affords substantially the same magnificent prospect. Near it, in the woods, stood a newly built cabin, looking badly out of place with its glaring unweathered boards; and beside the cabin stood a man and woman in a condition of extreme disgust. The man had come up the mountain to work in some coal-mine, if I understood him correctly; but the tools were not ready, there was no water, his household goods were stranded down in the valley somewhere (the hens were starving to death, the woman added), and, all in all, the pair were in a sorry plight.

Here, as at Signal Point, I made an addition to my local ornithology, and this time too the bird was a hawk. We were standing on the edge of the cliff, when a sparrow hawk, after alighting near us, took wing and hung for some time suspended over the abyss, beating against the breeze, and so holding itself steady,-a graceful piece of work, the better appreciated for being seen from above. Here, also, for the first time in my life, I was addressed as a "you-un." "Where be you-uns from?" asked the woman at the cabin, after the ordinary greetings had been exchanged. I believe, in my innocence, I had always looked upon that word as an invention of story-writers.

Somewhere in this neighborhood we traversed a pine wood, in which my first Walden pine warbler was trilling. Then, for some miles, we drove along the Brow, with the glory of the world-valley, river, and mountain-outspread before us, and the Great Smokies looming in the background, barely visible through the haze. For seven miles, I was told, one could drive along that mountain rim. Surely the city of Chattanooga is happy in its suburbs. Here were many cottages, the greater number as yet unopened; and not far beyond the one under the piazza of which I had weathered the thunderstorm of the day before, the road entered the forest again. Then, as the way grew more and more difficult, we left the horse behind us, and by and by came to a foot-path. This brought us at last to Falling Water Fall, where Little Falling Water-after threading the swamp and passing Mabbitt's Spring, as before described-tumbles over a precipice which my companion, with his surveyor's eye, estimated to be one hundred and fifty feet in height. The slender stream, broken into jewels as it falls, strikes the bottom at some distance from the foot of the cliffs, which here form the arc of a circle, and are not perpendicular, but deeply hollowed. After enjoying the prospect from this point,-holding to a tree and leaning over the edge of the rocks,-we retraced our steps till we came to a steep, zigzag path, which took us to the foot of the precipice. Here, as well as above, were laurel and rhododendron in profusion. One big rhododendron-tree grew on the face of the cliff, thirty feet over our heads, leaning outward, and bearing at least fifty clusters of gorgeous rose-purple flowers; and a smaller one, in a similar position, was equally full. The hanging gardens of Babylon may have been more wonderful, but I was well content.

From the point where we stood the ledge makes eastward for a long distance, almost at right angles, and the cliffs for a mile-or, more likely, for two or three miles-were straight before us, broken everywhere into angles, light gray and reddish-brown intermixed, with the late afternoon sun shining full upon them, and the green forest fringing them above and sweeping away from them below.

It was a breathless clamber up the rocks again, tired and poorly off as I was, but I reached the top with one hand full of rhododendrons (it seemed a shame to pick them, and a shame to leave them), and in half an hour we were driving homeward, our day's work done; while my seatmate, who, besides being preacher, lawyer, surveyor, and farmer, was also a mystic and a saint,-though he would have refused the word,-fell into a strain of reminiscence, appropriate to the hour, about the inner life of the soul, its hopes, its struggles, and its joys. I listened in reverent silence. The passion for perfection is not yet so common as to have become commonplace, and one need not be certain of a theory in order to admire a practice. He had already told me who his father was, and I had ceased to wonder at his using now and then a choice phrase.

My friend (he will allow me that word, I am sure) had given me a day of days, and with it a new idea of this mountain world; where the visitor finds hills and valleys, creeks and waterfalls, the most beautiful of forests, with clearings, isolated cabins, straggling settlements, orchards, and gardens, and where he forgets again and again that he is on a mountain at all. Even now I had seen but a corner of it, as I have seen but a corner of the larger world on which, for these few years back, I have had what I call my existence. And even of what I saw, much has gone undescribed: stately tulip-trees deep in the forest, with humming-birds darting from flower to flower among them; the flame-colored azalea; the ground flowers of the woods, including some tiny yellow lady's-slippers, too dainty for the foot of Cinderella herself; the road to Sawyer's Springs; and numbers of birds, whose names, even, I have omitted. It was a wonderful world; but if the hobbyist may take the pen for a single sentence, it may stand confessed that the greatest wonder of all was this,-that in all those miles of oak forest I found not one blue jay.

Another surprising circumstance, which I do not remember to have noticed, however, till my attention was somewhat rudely called to it, was the absence of colored people. With the exception of three servants at the hotel, I saw none but whites. Walden's Ridge, although stanchly Union in war-time, and largely Republican now, as I was told, is a white man's country. I had gone to bed one night, and was fast asleep, when I was wakened suddenly by the noise of some one hurrying up the stairs and shouting, "Where's the gun? Where's the gun? Shorty's been shot!" "Shorty" was the colored waiter, and the speaker was a general factotum, an English boy. The colored people-Shorty, his wife, and the cook-had been out on the edge of the woods behind the house, when three men had fired at them, or pretended to do so. It was explained the next morning that this was only an attempt (on the part of some irresponsible young men, as the older residents said) to "run the niggers off the mountain,"-after what I understood to be a somewhat regular custom. "Niggers" did not belong there; their place was down below. If a Chattanooga cottager brought up a colored servant, he was "respectfully requested" to send him back, and save the natives the trouble of attending to the matter. In short, the Ridgites appeared to look upon "niggers" as Northern laborers look upon non-union men-"scabs."

The hotel-keeper, an Englishman, with an Englishman's notions about personal rights, was naturally indignant. He would hire his own servants, or he would shut the house. In any event, the presence of "Whitecaps," real or imaginary, must affect his summer patronage. I fully expected to see the colored trio pack up and go back to Chattanooga, without waiting for further hints; but they showed no disposition to do anything of the sort, and, I must add, rose in my estimation accordingly.

Of the feeling of the community I had a slight but ludicrous intimation a day or two after the shooting. I passed a boy whom I had noticed in the road, some days before, playing with a pig, lifting him by the hind legs and pitching him over forwards. "He can turn a somerset good," he had said to me, as I passed. Now, for the sake of being neighborly, I asked, "How's the pig to-day?" He smiled, and made some reply, as if he appreciated the pleasantry; but a more serious-looking playmate took up his parable, and said, "The pig'll be all right, if the folks up at the hotel don't shoot him." His tone and look were intended to be deeply significant. "Oh, I know you," they implied: "you are up at the hotel, where they threaten to shoot white folks."

For my last afternoon-wars and rumors of wars long since forgotten-I went to the place that had pleased me first, the valley of Falling Water Creek. The cross-vine on the dead hemlock had by this time dropped the greater part of its bells, but even yet many were hanging from the uppermost branches. The rhododendron was still at the height of its splendor. All the gardens were nothing to it, I said to myself. Crossing the creek on the log, and the branch on stepping-stones, I went to quench my thirst at the Marshall Spring, which once had a cabin beside it, and frequent visitors, but now was clogged with fallen leaves and seemingly abandoned. It was perhaps more beautiful so. Directly behind it rose a steep bank, and in front stood an oak and a maple, the latter leaning toward it and forming a pointed arch,-a worthy entrance. Mossy stones walled it in, and ferns grew luxuriantly about it. Just over them, an azalea still held two fresh pink flowers, the last till another May. In such a spot it would have been easy to grow sentimental; but there came a rumbling of thunder, the sky darkened, and, with a final hasty look about me, I picked up my umbrella and started homeward.

My last walk had ended like many others in that showery, fragmentary week. But what is bad weather when the time is past? All those black clouds have left no shadow on Walden's Ridge, and the best of all my strolls beside Falling Water, a stroll not yet finished,

"The calm sense of seen beauty without sight,"

suffers no harm. As Thoreau says, "It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain."

* * *

SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES.

Whoever loves the music of English sparrows should live in Chattanooga; there is no place on the planet, it is to be hoped, where they are more numerous and pervasive. Mocking-birds are scarce. To the best of my recollection, I saw none in the city itself, and less than half a dozen in the surrounding country. A young gentleman whom I questioned upon the subject told me that they used to be common, and attributed their present increasing rarity to the persecution of boys, who find a profit in selling the young into captivity. Their place, in the city especially, is taken by catbirds; interesting, imitative, and in their own measure tuneful, but poor substitutes for mocking-birds. In fact, that is a r?le which it is impossible to think of any bird as really filling. The brown thrush, it is true, sings quite in the mocking-bird's manner, and, to my ear, almost or quite as well; but he possesses no gift as a mimic, and furthermore, without being exactly a bird of the forest or the wilderness, is instinctively and irreclaimably a recluse. It would be hard, even among human beings, to find a nature less touched with urbanity. In the mocking-bird the elements are more happily mingled. Not gregarious, intolerant of rivalry, and, as far as creatures of his own kind are concerned, a stickler for elbow-room,-sharing with his brown relative in that respect,-he is at the same time a born citizen and neighbor; as fond of gardens and dooryard trees as the thrasher is of scrublands and barberry bushes. "Man delights me," he might say, "and woman also." He likes to be listened to, it is pretty certain; and possibly he is dimly aware of the artistic value of appreciation, without which no artist ever did his best. Add to this endearing social quality the splendor and freedom of the mocker's vocal performances, multifarious, sensational, incomparable, by turns entrancing and amusing, and it is easy to understand how he has come to hold a place by himself in Southern sentiment and literature. A city without mocking-birds is only half Southern, though black faces be never so thick upon the sidewalks and mules never so common in the streets. If the boys have driven the great mimic away from Chattanooga, it is time the fathers took the boys in hand. Civic pride alone ought to bring this about, to say nothing of the possible effect upon real estate values of the abundant and familiar presence of this world-renowned, town-loving, town-charming songster.

From my window, on the side of Cameron Hill, I heard daily the singing of an orchard oriole-another fine and neighborly bird-and a golden warbler, with sometimes the fidgety, fidgety of a Maryland yellow-throat. What could he be fussing about in so unlikely a quarter? An adjoining yard presented the unnatural spectacle-unnatural, but, I am sorry to say, not unprecedented-of a bird-house occupied in partnership by purple martins and English sparrows. They had finished their quarrels, if they had ever had any,-which can hardly be open to doubt, both native and foreigner being constitutionally belligerent,-and frequently sat side by side upon the ridge-pole, like the best of friends. The oftener I saw them there, the more indignant I became at the martins' un-American behavior. Such a disgraceful surrender of the Monroe Doctrine was too much even for a man of peace. I have never called myself a Jingo, but for once it would have done me good to see the lion's tail twisted.

With the exception of a few pairs of rough-wings on Missionary Ridge, the martins seemed to be the only swallows in the country at that time of the year; and though Progne subis, in spite of an occasional excess of good nature, is a most noble bird, it was impossible not to feel that by itself it constituted but a meagre representation of an entire family. Swallows are none too numerous in Massachusetts, in these days, and are pretty certainly growing fewer and fewer, what with the prevalence of the box-monopolizing European sparrow, and the passing of the big, old-fashioned, widely ventilated barn; for there is no member of the family, not even the sand martin, whose distribution does not depend in great degree upon human agency. Even yet, however, if a Massachusetts man will make a circuit of a few miles, he will usually meet with tree swallows, barn swallows, cliff swallows, sand martins, and purple martins. In other words, he need not go far to find all the species of eastern North America, with the single exception of the least attractive of the six; that is to say, the rough-wing. As compared with the people of eastern Tennessee, then, we are still pretty well favored. It is worth while to travel now and then, if only to find ourselves better off at home.

It might be easy to suggest plausible reasons for the general absence of swallows from a country like that about Chattanooga; but the extraordinary scarcity of hawks, while many persons-not ornithologists-would account it less of a calamity, is more of a puzzle. From Walden's Ridge I saw a single sparrow hawk and a single red-tail; in addition to which I remember three birds whose identity I could not determine. Five hawks in the course of three weeks spent entirely out of doors, in the neighborhood of mountains covered with old forest! Taken by itself, this unexpected showing might have been ascribed to some queer combination of accidents, or to a failure of observation. In fact, I was inclined so to explain it till I noticed that Mr. Brewster had chronicled a similar state of things in what is substantially the same piece of country. Writing of western North Carolina, he says:[3] "The general scarcity-one may almost say absence-of hawks in this region during the breeding season is simply unaccountable. Small birds and mammals, lizards, snakes, and other animals upon which the various species subsist are everywhere numerous, the country is wild and heavily forested, and, in short, all the necessary conditions of environment seem to be fulfilled." Certainly, so far as my ingenuity goes, the mystery is "unaccountable;" but of course, like every other mystery, it would open quickly enough if we could find the key.

Turkey vultures were moderately numerous,-much less abundant than in Florida,-and twice I saw a single black vulture, recognizable, almost as far as it could be seen (but I do not mean at a first glance, nor without due precaution against foreshortened effects), by its docked tail. Both are invaluable in their place,-useful, graceful, admirable, and disgusting. The vultures, the martins, and the swifts were the only common aerial birds. The swifts, happily, were everywhere,-jovial souls in a sooty dress,-and had already begun nest-building. I saw them continually pulling up against the twigs of a partially dead tree near my window. In them nature has developed the bird idea to its extreme,-a pair of wings, with just body enough for ballast; like a racing-yacht, built for nothing but to carry sail and avoid resistance. Their flight is a good visual music, as Emerson might have said; but I love also their quick, eager notes, like the sounds of children at play. And while it has nothing to do with Tennessee, I am prompted to mention here a bird of this species that I once saw in northern New Hampshire on the 1st of October,-an extraordinarily late date, if my experience counts for anything. With a friend I had made an ascent of Mount Lafayette (one of the days of a man's life), and as we came near the Profile House, on our return to the valley, there passed overhead a single chimney swift. What he could be doing there at that season was more than either of us could divine. It was impossible to feel any great concern about him, however. The afternoon was nearly done, but at the rate he was traveling it seemed as if he might be in Mexico before sunrise. And easily enough he may have been, if Mr. G?tke is right in his contention that birds of very moderate powers of wing are capable of flying all night at the rate of four miles a minute!

The comparative scarcity of crows about Chattanooga, and the amazing dearth of jays in the oak forest of Walden's Ridge, have been touched upon elsewhere. As for the jays, their absence must have been more apparent than real, I am bound to believe. It was their silent time, probably. Still another thing that I found surprising was the small number of woodpeckers. For the first four days I saw not a single representative of the family. It would be next to impossible to be so much out of doors in Massachusetts at any season of the year with a like result. During my three weeks in Tennessee I saw eight flickers, seven hairy woodpeckers, two red-heads, and two or three red-cockaded woodpeckers, besides which I heard one downy and one "logcock." The last-named bird, which is big enough for even the careless to notice, seemed to be well known to the inhabitants of Walden's Ridge, where I heard it. By what they told me, it should be fairly common, but I saw nothing of its "peck-holes." The first of my two red-headed woodpeckers was near the base of Missionary Ridge, wasting his time in exploring pole after pole along the railway. Did he mistake them for so many dead trees still standing on their own roots? Dry and seemingly undecayed, they appeared to me to offer small encouragement to a grub-seeker; but probably the fellow knew his own business best. On questions of economic entomology, I fear I should prove but a lame adviser for the most benighted woodpecker that ever drummed. And yet, being a man, I could not help feeling that this particular red-head was behaving uncommonly like a fool. Was there ever a man who did not take it as a matter of course that he should be wiser than the "lower animals"?

Humming-birds cut but a small figure in my daily notes till I went to Walden's Ridge. There, in the forest, they were noticeably abundant,-for humming-birds, that is to say. It seemed to be the time of pairing with them; more than once the two sexes were seen together,-an unusual occurrence, unless my observation has been unfortunate, after the nest is built, or even while it is building. One female piqued my curiosity by returning again and again to the bole of an oak, hovering before it as before a flower, and more than once clinging to its rough upright surface. At first I took it for granted that she was picking off bits of lichen with which to embellish the outer wall of her nest; but after each browsing she alighted here or there on a leafless twig. If she had been gathering nest material, she would have flown away with it, I thought.

At another time, in a tangle of shrubbery, I witnessed a most lively encounter between two humming-birds; a case of fighting or love-making,-two things confusingly alike to an outsider,-in the midst of which one of the contestants suddenly displayed so dazzling a gorget that for an instant I mistook it for a scarlet flower. I did not "wipe my eye," not being a poet, nor even a "rash gazer," but I admired anew the wonderful flashing jewel, now coal-black, now flaming red, with which, perhaps, the male ruby-throat blinds his long-suffering mate to all his shameful treatment of her in her season of watchfulness and motherly anxiety. Does she never remind him, I wonder, that there are some things whose price is far above rubies? I had never seen the humming-bird so much a forest-dweller as here, and gladly confessed that I had never seen him when he looked so romantically at home and in place. The tulip-trees, in particular, might have been made on purpose for him.

As the Chattanooga neighborhood was poorly supplied with hawks, woodpeckers, and swallows, so was it likewise with sparrows, though in a less marked degree. The common species-the only resident species that I met with, but my explorations were nothing like complete-were chippers, field sparrows, and Bachman sparrows; the first interesting for their familiarity, the other two for their musical gifts. In a comparison between eastern Tennessee-as I saw it-and eastern Massachusetts, the Bachman sparrow must be set against the song sparrow, the vesper sparrow, and the swamp sparrow. It is a brilliant and charming songster, one of the very finest; but it would be too costly a bargain to buy its presence with loss of the song sparrow's abounding versatility and high spirits, and the vesper sparrow's unfailing sweetness, serenity, and charm.

So much for the sparrows, commonly so called. If we come to the family as a whole, the goodly family of sparrows and finches, we miss in Tennessee the rose-breasted grosbeak and the purple finch, two of our best esteemed Massachusetts birds, both for music and for beauty; to offset which we have the cardinal grosbeak, whose whistle is exquisite, but who can hardly be ranked as a singer above either the rose-breast or the linnet, to say nothing of the two combined.

At the season of my visit,-in the latter half of the vernal migration,-the preponderance of woodland birds, especially of the birds known as wood warblers, was very striking. Of ninety-three species observed, twenty-eight belonged to the warbler family. In this list it was curious to remark the absence of the Nashville and the Tennessee. The circumstance is significant of the comparative worthlessness-except from a historical point of view-of locality names as they are applied to American birds in general. Here were Maryland yellow-throats, Cape May warblers, Canada warblers, Kentucky warblers, prairie warblers, palm warblers, Acadian flycatchers, but not the two birds (the only two, as well as I remember) that bear Tennessee names.[4] The absence of the Nashville was a matter of wonderment to me. Dr. Rives, I have since noticed, records it as only a rare migrant in Virginia. Yet by some route it reaches eastern New England in decidedly handsome numbers. Its congener, the blue golden-wing, surprised me in an opposite direction,-by its commonness, both in the lower country near the river and on Walden's Ridge. This, too, is a rare bird in Virginia; so much so that Dr. Rives has never met with it there. In certain places about Chattanooga it was as common as it is locally in the towns about Boston, where, to satisfy a skeptical friend, I once counted eleven males in song in the course of a morning's walk. That the Chattanooga birds were on their breeding grounds I had at the time no question, although I happened upon no proof of the fact.

In the same way, from the manner in which the oven-birds were scattered over Walden's Ridge in the middle of May, I assumed, rather hastily, that they were at home for the summer. Months afterward, however, happening to notice their southern breeding limits as given by the best of authorities,-"breeding from ... Virginia northward,"-I saw that I might easily have been in error. I wrote, therefore, to a Chattanooga gentleman, who pays attention to birds while disclaiming acquaintance with ornithology, and he replied that if the oven-bird summered in that country he did not know it. The case seemed to be going against me, but I bethought myself of Mr. Brewster's "Ornithological Reconnaissance in Western North Carolina," and there I read,[5] "The open oak woodlands, so prevalent in this region, are in every way adapted to the requirements of the oven-bird, and throughout them it is one of the commonest and most characteristic summer birds." "Open oak woodlands" is exactly descriptive of the Walden's Ridge forest; and eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina being practically one, I resume my assured belief (personal and of no authority) that the birds I saw and heard were, as I first thought, natives of the mountain. Birds which are at home have, as a rule, an air of being at home; a certain manner hard to define, but felt, nevertheless, as a pretty strong kind of evidence-not proof-by a practiced observer.

Several of the more northern species of the warbler family manifested an almost exclusive preference for patches of evergreens. I have elsewhere detailed my experience in a grove of stunted pines on Lookout Mountain. A similar growth is found on Cameron Hill,-in the city of Chattanooga,-one side of which is occupied by dwellings, while the other drops to the river so precipitously as to be almost inaccessible, and is even yet, I was told, an abode of foxes. On the day after my arrival I strolled to the top of the hill toward evening, and in the pines found a few black-polls and yellow-rumps. I was in a listless mood, having already taken a fair day's exercise under an intolerable sun, but I waked up with a start when my glass fell on a bird which at a second glance showed the red cheeks of a Cape May warbler. For a moment I was almost in poor Susan's case,-

"I looked, and my heart was in heaven."

Then, all too soon, as happened to poor Susan also, the vision faded. But I had seen it. Yes, here it was in Tennessee, the rarity for which, spring after spring, I had been so many years on the watch. I had come South to find it, after all,-a bird that breeds from the northern border of New England to Hudson's Bay!

It is of the nature of such excitements that, at the time, the subject of them has no thought of analyzing or justifying his emotions. He is better employed. Afterward, in some vacant mood, with no longer anything actively to enjoy, he may play with the past, and from an evil habit, or flattering himself with a show of intellectuality, may turn his former delight into a study; tickling his present conceit of himself by smiling at the man he used to be. How very wise he has grown, to be sure! All such refinements, nevertheless, if he did but know it, are only a poorer kind of child's play; less spontaneous, infinitely less satisfying, and equally irrational. Ecstasy is not to be assayed by any test that the reason is competent to apply; nor does it need either defense or apology. It is its own end, and so, like beauty, its own excuse for being. That is one of the crowning felicities of this present order of things,-the world, as we call it. What dog would hunt if there were no excitement in overhauling the game? And how would elderly people live through long evenings if there were no exhilaration in the odd trick?

"What good does it do?" a prudent friend and adviser used to say to me, smiling at the fervor of my first ornithological enthusiasm. He thought he was asking me a poser; but I answered gayly, "It makes me happy;" and taking things as they run, happiness is a pretty substantial "good." So was it now with the sight of this long-desired warbler. It taught me nothing; it put nothing into my pocket; but it made me happy,-happy enough to sing and shout, though I am ashamed to say I did neither. And even a sober son of the Puritans may be glad to find himself, in some unexpected hour, almost as ineffably delighted as he used to be with a new plaything in the time when he had not yet tasted of the tree of knowledge, and knew not that the relish for playthings could ever be outgrown. I cannot affirm that I went quite as wild over my first Cape May warbler as I did over my first sled (how well the rapture of that frosty midwinter morning is remembered,-a hard crust on the snow, and the sun not yet risen!), but I came as near to that state of heavenly felicity-to re?nter which we must become as little children-as a person of my years is ever likely to do, perhaps.

It is one precious advantage of natural history studies that they afford endless opportunities for a man to enjoy himself in this sweetly childish spirit, while at the same time his occupation is dignified by a certain scientific atmosphere and relationship. He is a collector of insects, let us say. Whether he goes to the Adirondacks for the summer, or to Florida for the winter, he is surrounded with nets and cyanide bottles. He travels with them as another travels with packs of cards. Every day's catch is part of the game; and once in a while, as happened to me on Cameron Hill, he gets a "great hand," and in imagination, at least, sweeps the board. Commonplace people smile at him, no doubt; but that is only amusing, and he smiles in turn. He can tell many good stories under that head. He delights to be called a "crank." It is all because of people's ignorance. They have no idea that he is Mr. So-and-So, the entomologist; that he is in correspondence with learned men the country over; that he once discovered a new cockroach, and has had a grasshopper named after him; that he has written a book, or is going to write one. Happy man! a contributor to the world's knowledge, but a pleasure-seeker; a little of a savant, and very much of a child; a favorite of Heaven, whose work is play. No wonder it is commonly said that natural historians are a cheerful set.

For the supplying of rarities and surprises there are no birds like the warblers. Their pursuit is the very spice of American ornithology. The multitude of species (Mr. Chapman's "Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America" enumerates forty-five species and sub-species) is of itself an incalculable blessing in this respect. No single observer is likely ever to come to the end of them. They do not warble, it must be owned, and few of them have much distinction as singers, the best that I know being the black-throated green and the Kentucky; but they are elegant and varied in their plumage, with no lack of bright tints, while their extreme activity and their largely arboreal habits render their specific determination and their individual study a work most agreeably difficult and tantalizing. The ornithologist who has seen all the warblers of his own territory, say of New England, and knows them all by their notes, and has found all their nests,-well, he is himself a pretty rare specimen.

As for my experience with the family in Tennessee, I was glad, of course, to scrape acquaintance-or to renew it, as the case might be-with the more southern species, the Kentucky, the hooded, the cerulean, the blue-wing, and the yellow-throat: that was partly why I was here; but perhaps I enjoyed quite as keenly the sight of our own New England birds moving homeward; tarrying here and there for a day, but not to be tempted by all the allurements of this fine country; still pushing on, northward, and still northward, as if for them there were no place in the world but the woods where they were born. Of the southern species just named, the Kentucky was the most abundant, with the hooded not far behind. The prairie warbler seemed about as common here as in its favored Massachusetts haunts; but unless my ear was at fault its song went somewhat less trippingly: it sounded labored,-too much like the scarlet tanager's in the way of effort and jerkiness. Unlike the golden warbler, the prairie was found not only in the lower country, but-in less numbers-on Walden's Ridge. The two warblers that I listed every day, no matter where I went, were the chat and the black-and-white creeper.

When all is said, the Kentucky, with its beauty and its song, is the star of the family, as far as eastern Tennessee is concerned. I can hear it now, while Falling Water goes babbling past in the shade of laurel and rhododendron. As for the chat, it was omnipresent: in the valley, along the river, on Missionary Ridge, on Lookout Mountain, on Walden's Ridge, in the national cemetery, at Chickamauga,-everywhere, in short, except within the city itself. In this regard it exceeded the white-eyed vireo, and even the indigo-bird, I think. Black-polls were seen daily up to May 13, after which they were missing altogether. The last Cape May and the last yellow-rump were noted on the 8th, the last redstart and the last palm warbler on the 11th, the last chestnut-side, magnolia, and Canadian warbler on the 12th. On the 12th, also, I saw my only Wilson's blackcap. In my last outing, on the 18th, on Walden's Ridge, I came upon two Blackburnians in widely separate places. At the time, I assumed them to be migrants, in spite of the date. One of them was near the hotel, on ground over which I had passed almost daily. Why they should be so behindhand was more than I could tell; but only the day before I had seen a thrush which was either a gray-cheek or an olive-back, and of course a bird of passage. "The flight of warblers did not pass entirely until May 19," says Mr. Jeffries, writing of what he saw in western North Carolina.[6]

The length of time occupied by some species in accomplishing their semi-annual migration is well known to be very considerable, and is best observed-in spring, at least-at some southern point. It is admirably illustrated in Mr. Chapman's "List of Birds seen at Gainesville, Florida."[7] Tree swallows, he tells us, were abundant up to May 6, a date at which Massachusetts tree swallows have been at home for nearly or quite a month. Song sparrows were noted March 31, two or three weeks after the grand irruption of song sparrows into Massachusetts usually occurs. Bobolinks, which reach Massachusetts by the 10th of May, or earlier, were still very abundant-both sexes-May 25! Such dates are not what we should have expected, I suppose, especially in the case of a bird like the bobolink, which has no very high northern range; but they seem not to be exceptional, and are surprising only because we have not yet mastered the general subject. Nothing exists by itself, and therefore nothing can be understood by itself. One thing the most ignorant of us may see,-that the long period covered by the migratory journeys is a matter for ornithological thankfulness. In Massachusetts, for example, spring migrants begin to appear in late February or early March, and some of the most interesting members of the procession-notably the mourning warbler and the yellow-bellied flycatcher-are to be looked for after the first of June. The autumnal movement is equally protracted; so that for at least half the year-leaving winter with its arctic possibilities out of consideration-we may be on the lookout for strangers.

One of the dearest pleasures of a southern trip in winter or early spring is the very thing at which I have just now hinted, the sight of one's home birds in strange surroundings. You leave New England in early February, for instance, and in two or three days are loitering in the sunny pine-lands about St. Augustine, with the trees full of robins, bluebirds, and pine warblers, and the savanna patches full of meadow larks. Myrtle warblers are everywhere. Ph?bes salute you as you walk the city streets, and flocks of chippers and vesper sparrows enliven the fields along the country roads. In a piece of hammock just outside the town you find yourself all at once surrounded by a winter colony of summer birds. Here are solitary vireos, Maryland yellow-throats, black-and-white creepers, prairie warblers, red-poll warblers, hermit thrushes, red-eyed chewinks, thrashers, catbirds, cedar-birds, and many more. White-eyed vireos are practicing in the smilax thickets,-though they have small need of practice,-and white-bellied swallows go flashing and twittering overhead. The world is good, you say, and life is a festival.

My vacation in Tennessee afforded less of contrast and surprise, for a twofold reason: it was near the end of April, instead of early in February, so that migrants had been arriving in Massachusetts for six or seven weeks before my departure; and Tennessee has nothing of the foreign, half-tropical look which Florida presents to Yankee eyes; but even so, it was no small pleasure to step suddenly into a world full of summer music. Such multitudes of birds as were singing on Missionary Ridge on that first bright forenoon! The number of species was not great, when it came to counting them,-morning and afternoon together yielded but forty-two; but the whole country seemed alive with wings. And of the forty-two species, thirty-two were such as summer in Massachusetts or pass through it to their homes beyond. Here were already (April 27) the olive-backed thrush, and northern warblers like the black-poll, the bay-breast, and the Cape May, none of which would be due in Massachusetts for at least a fortnight. Here, too, were yellow-rumps and white-throated sparrows, though the advance guard of both species had reached New England before I left home. The white-throats lingered on Walden's Ridge on the 13th of May, a fact which surprised me more at the time than it does in the review.

One bird was seen on this first day, and not afterward. I had been into the woods north of the city, and was returning, when from the bridge over the Tennessee I caught sight of a small flock of black birds, which at first, even with the aid of my glass, I could not make out, the bridge being so high above the river and its banks. While I was watching them, however, they began to sing. They were bobolinks. Probably the species is not common in eastern Tennessee, as the name is wanting in Dr. Fox's "List of Birds found in Roane County, Tennessee, during April, 1884, and March and April, 1885."[8]

I have ventured upon some slight ornithological comparison between southeastern Tennessee and eastern Massachusetts, and, writing as a patriot (or a partisan), have seen to it that the scale inclined northward. To this end I have made as much as possible of the absence of robins, song sparrows, and vesper sparrows, and of the comparative dearth of swallows; but of course the loyal Tennessean is in no want of a ready answer. Robins, song sparrows, vesper sparrows, and swallows are not absent, except as breeding birds. He has them all in their season,[9] and probably hears them sing. On the whole, then, he may fairly retort, he has considerably the advantage of us Yankees: he sees our birds on their passage, and drinks his fill of their music before we have caught the first spring notes; while we, on the other hand, see nothing of his distinctively southern birds unless we come South for the purpose. Well, they are worth the journey. Bachman's finch alone-yes, the one dingy, shabbily clad little genius by the Chickamauga well-might almost have repaid me for my thousand miles on the rail.

* * *

It was a strange mingling of sensations that possessed me in Chattanooga. The city itself was like other cities of its age and size, with some appearance of a community that had been in haste to grow,-a trifle impatient, shall we say (impatience being one of the virtues of youth), to pull down its barns and build greater; just now a little checked in its ambition, as things looked; yet still enterprising, still fairly well satisfied with itself, with no lack of energy and bustle. As it happened, there was a stir in local politics at the time of my visit (possibly there always is), and at the street corners all patriotic citizens were exhorted to do their duty. "Vote for Tom -- for sheriff," said one placard. "Vote for Bob --," said another, in capitals equally importunate. In Tennessee, as everywhere else, the politician knows his trade. Familiarity, readiness with the hand, freedom with one's own name (Tom, not Thomas, if you please), and a happy knack at remembering the names of other people,-these are some of the pre?lection tests of statesmanship.

All in all, then, between politics and business, the city was "very much alive," as the saying goes; but somehow it was not so often the people about me that occupied my thoughts as those who had been here thirty years before. Precious is the power of a first impression. Because I was newly in the country I was constantly under the feeling of its past. Hither and thither I went in the region round about, listening at every turn, spying into every bush at the stirring of a leaf or the chirp of a bird; yet I had always with me the men of '63, and felt always that I was on holy ground.

* * *

A LIST OF BIRDS

Found in the Neighborhood of Chattanooga from April 27 to May 18, 1894.

1. Green Heron. Ardea virescens.-A single individual seen from a car window. No other water birds were observed except three or four ducks and a single wader, all upon the wing and unidentified.

2. Bob White. Quail. Partridge. Colinus virginianus.-Common.

3. Ruffed Grouse. "Pheasant." Bonasa umbettus.-Heard drumming on Walden's Ridge.

4. Carolina Dove. Mourning Dove. Zenaidura macroura.-A small number seen.

5. Turkey Vulture. Turkey Buzzard. Cathartes aura.-Common.

6. Black Vulture. Carrion Crow. Catharista atrata.-Two birds seen.

7. Red-tailed Hawk. Buteo borealis.-One bird seen from Walden's Ridge.

8. Sparrow Hawk. Falco sparverius.-One bird, on Walden's Ridge.

9. Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus americanus.-Common. First noticed April 29.

10. Black-billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus erythrophthalmus.-Seen twice on Lookout Mountain, May 7 and 8, and once on Walden's Ridge, May 12.

11. Belted Kingfisher. Ceryle alcyon.-A single bird heard on Walden's Ridge.

12. Hairy Woodpecker. Dryobates villosus.-My notes record seven birds. No attempt was made to determine their specific or sub-specific identity, but they are presumed to have been D. villosus, not D. villosus audubonii.

13. Downy Woodpecker. Dryobates pubescens.-A single bird was heard (not seen) on Walden's Ridge,-a noticeable reversal of the usual relative commonness of this species and the preceding.

14. Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Dryobates borealis.-Found only at Chickamauga, on Snodgrass Hill, in long-leaved pines-two or three birds.

15. Pileated Woodpecker. "Logcock." Ceophl?us pileatus.-Said to be common on Walden's Ridge, where I heard its flicker-like shout.

16. Red-headed Woodpecker. Melanerpes erythrocephalus.-One seen near Missionary Ridge and one at Chickamauga. The scarcity of this bird, and the absence of the red-bellied and the yellow-bellied, were among the surprises of my visit.

17. Flicker. Golden-winged Woodpecker. Colaptes auratus.-Not common. Three birds were seen at Chickamauga, and it was occasional on Walden's Ridge, where I listed it five days of the seven.

18. Whippoorwill. Antrostomus vociferus.-Undoubtedly common. I heard it only on Walden's Ridge, the only place where I went into the woods after dark.

19. Nighthawk. Chordeiles virginianus.-Common.

20. Chimney Swift. Ch?tura pelagica.-Abundant.

21. Ruby-throated Humming-bird. Trochilus colubris.-Common in the forests of Walden's Ridge. Seen but twice elsewhere. First seen April 28.

22. Kingbird. Tyrannus tyrannus.-Seen but three times-nine specimens in all. First seen April 29.

23. Crested Flycatcher. Myiarchus crinitus.-Noticed daily, with two exceptions.

24. Ph?be. Sayornis ph?be.-Common on Lookout Mountain and Walden's Ridge. Not seen elsewhere.

25. Wood Pewee. Contopus virens.-Very common. Much the most numerous member of the family. Present in good force April 27, and gathering nest materials April 29.

26. Acadian Flycatcher. Green-crested Flycatcher. Empidonax virescens.-Common.

27. Blue Jay. Cyanocitta cristata.-Scarce (for the blue jay), and not seen on Walden's Ridge!

28. Crow. Corvus americanus.-Apparently much less common than in Eastern Massachusetts.

29. Bobolink. Dolichonyx oryzivorus.-A small flock seen, and heard singing, April 27.

30. Orchard Oriole. Icterus spurius.-Common, but not found on Walden's Ridge.

31. Baltimore Oriole. Icterus galbula.-A single bird, at Chickamauga, May 3.

32. Crow Blackbird. Quiscalus quiscula?-Seen on sundry occasions in the valley country, but specific distinction not made out. Both forms-Q. quiscula and Q. quiscula ?neus-are found in Tennessee. See Dr. Fox's List of Birds found in Roane County, Tennessee. "The Auk," vol. iii. p. 315. My own list of the Icterid? is remarkable for its omissions, especially of the cowbird, the red-winged blackbird (which, however, I am pretty certain that I saw on the wing) and the meadow lark.

33. House Sparrow. English Sparrow. Passer domesticus.-Distressingly superabundant in the city and its suburbs.

34. Goldfinch. Spinus tristis.-Abundant. Still in flocks.

35. White-crowned Sparrow. Zonotrichia leucophrys.-Seen but once (May 1), two birds, in the national cemetery.

36. White-throated Sparrow. Zonotrichia albicollis.-Common. Still present on Walden's Ridge (in two places) May 13. Sang very little.

37. Chipping Sparrow. Doorstep Sparrow. Spizella socialis.-Common.

38. Field Sparrow. Spizella pusilla.-Common.

39. Bachman's Sparrow. Peuc?a ?stivalis bachmanii.-Common. One of the best of singers.

40. Chewink. Towhee. Pipilo erythrophthalmus.-Rather common. Much less numerous than I should have expected from the nature of the country.

41. Cardinal Grosbeak. Cardinalis cardinalis.-Seen daily, but seemingly not very numerous.

42. Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Habia ludoviciana.-A single female, May 11.

43. Indigo-bird. Passerina cyanea.-Very abundant. For the first time I saw this tropical-looking beauty in flocks.

44. Scarlet Tanager. Piranga erythromelas.-Common on the mountains, but seemingly rare in the valley.

45. Summer Tanager. Piranga rubra.-Common throughout.

46. Purple Martin. Progne subis.-Common.

47. Rough-winged Swallow. Stelgidopteryx serripennis.-A few birds seen.

48. Red-eyed Vireo. Vireo olivaceus.-Common. One of the species listed every day.

49. Yellow-throated Vireo. Vireo flavifrons.-Common. Seen or heard every day except April 27.

50. White-eyed Vireo. Vireo noveboracensis.-Abundant. Heard every day.

51. Black-and-white Creeper. Mniotilta varia.-Very common.

52. Blue-winged Warbler. Helminthophila pinus.-One bird seen at Chickamauga, and a pair on Missionary Ridge.

53. Golden-winged Warbler. Helminthophila chrysoptera.-Common, especially in the broken woods north of the city.

54. Panda Warbler. Blue Yellow-backed Warbler. Compsothlypis americana.-Only on Walden's Ridge.

55. Cape May Warbler. Dendroica tigrina.-One bird seen on Cameron Hill, and a small company on Lookout Mountain-April 27, and May 7 and 8.

56. Yellow Warbler. Golden Warbler. Dendroica ?stiva.-Common, but not observed on Walden's Ridge.

57. Black-throated Blue Warbler. Dendroica c?rulescens.-Common, April 27 to May 14.

58. Myrtle Warbler. Yellow-rumped Warbler. Dendroica coronata.-Noted April 27 and 28, and May 7 and 8.

59. Magnolia Warbler. Dendroica maculosa.-Not uncommon, May 1 to 12.

60. Cerulean Warbler. Dendroica c?rulea.-One bird, a male in song, on Lookout Mountain.

61. Chestnut-sided Warbler. Dendroica pensylvanica.-Listed on six dates-April 27 to May 12.

62. Bay-breasted Warbler. Dendroica castanea.-Seven or eight individuals-April 27 to May 10.

63. Black-poll Warbler. Dendroica striata.-Common to May 13.

64. Blackburnian Warbler. Dendroica blackburni?.-Seven birds-May 1 to 18.

65. Yellow-throated Warbler. Dendroica dominica. (Albilora?)-Found only at Chickamauga (Snodgrass Hill), where it seemed to be common.

66. Black-throated green Warbler. Dendroica virens.-Common.

67. Pine Warbler. Dendroica vigorsii.-Not numerous, but found in appropriate places.

68. Palm Warbler. Dendroica palmarum.-The specific-or sub-specific-identity of this bird was not certainly determined, but I judged the specimens-seen on four dates, April 29 to May 11-to be as above given, rather than D. palmarum hypochrysea.

69. Prairie Warbler. Dendroica discolor.-Very common.

70. Oven-bird. Seiurus aurocapillus.-Common on Lookout Mountain and Walden's Ridge. Seen but once in the lower country.

71. Louisiana Water-thrush. Seiurus motacilla.-A few birds seen on Walden's Ridge.

72. Kentucky Warbler. Geothlypis formosa.-Very common, and in places very unlike.

73. Maryland Yellow-throat. Geothlypis trichas.-Common.

74. Yellow-breasted Chat. Icteria virens.-Very common.

75. Hooded Warbler. Sylvania mitrata.-Common, especially along the woodland streams on Walden's Ridge.

76. Wilson's Blackcap. Sylvania pusilla.-A single bird on Walden's Ridge, May 12, in free song.

77. Canadian Warbler. Sylvania canadensis.-Seen on three dates-May 6, 11, and 12.

78. Redstart. Setophaga ruticilla.-Common. Not seen after May 14.

79. Mocking-bird. Mimus polyglottos.-Rare. Not found on the mountains.

80. Catbird. Galeoscoptes carolinensis.-Very common, both in the city and in the country round about.

81. Brown Thrasher. Harporhynchus rufus.-Common.

82. Carolina Wren. Mocking Wren. Thryothorus ludovicianus.-Common.

83. Bewick's Wren. Thryothorus bewickii.-Not common. Seen only on Missionary Ridge.

84. White-breasted Nuthatch. Sitta carolinensis.-Common at Chickamauga and on Walden's Ridge. A single bird noticed on Lookout Mountain.

85. Tufted Titmouse. Parus bicolor.-Common.

86. Carolina Chickadee. Parus carolinensis.-Common.

87. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Polioptila c?rulea.-Common.

88. Wood Thrush. Turdus mustelinus.-Very common. A bird with its beak full of nest materials was seen April 29, at the base of Missionary Ridge.

89. Wilson's Thrush. Veery. Turdus fuscescens.-Rare.

90. Gray-cheeked Thrush. Turdus alici?, or T. alici? bicknelli.-Two birds, May 2 and 13.

91. Swainson's Thrush. Olive-backed Thrush. Turdus ustulatus swainsonii.-In good numbers and free song. Seen on four dates, the latest being May 12.

92. Robin. Merula migratoria.-Five birds in the national cemetery, April 29.

93. Bluebird. Sialia sialis.-Common. Young birds out of the nest, April 28.

* * *

INDEX.

Arbutus, 137.

Azalea:- flame-colored, 178.

pink, 182.

white, 132.

Baptisia, blue, 14, 93.

Blackbird:- crow, 99.

red-winged, 215.

Bluebird, 9, 13, 78, 99, 111, 207.

Bobolink, 205, 209.

Buzzard, turkey, 6, 188.

Catbird, 6, 17, 25, 43, 47, 78, 99, 111, 183, 207.

Catchfly, scarlet, 15, 85, 109.

Cedar-bird, 207.

Chat, yellow-breasted, 3, 6, 9, 13, 17, 19, 27, 47, 55, 99, 110, 121, 135, 204.

Chewink, 6, 13, 207.

Chickadee, blackcap, 98.

Chickadee, Carolina, 13, 25, 71, 88.

Cowslip, 85.

Cranesbill, 34, 85.

Creeper, black-and-white, 6, 12, 33, 42, 117, 204, 207.

Cross-vine, 23, 137, 181.

Crow, 42, 189.

Cuckoo:- black-billed, 31, 42.

yellow-billed, 19, 24, 71, 99, 111, 117.

Dogwood, flowering, 136.

Dove, mourning, 24.

Fern:- cinnamon, 148.

maiden-hair, 47.

Finch:- Bachman's, 2, 6, 9, 13, 25, 66, 78, 81, 110, 118, 193, 194, 210.

purple, 194.

Flicker, 66, 78, 190.

Flycatcher:- Acadian, 17, 24, 26, 62, 117.

crested, 9, 13, 67, 71, 87.

yellow-bellied, 206.

Fringe-tree, 135.

Ginger, wild, 137.

Gnatcatcher, blue-gray, 6, 13, 18, 55, 99, 110.

Goldfinch, 13, 17, 24, 25, 47, 78, 111.

Gromwell, 85, 92.

Grosbeak:- cardinal, 6, 13, 23, 26, 42, 135, 146, 162.

rose-breasted, 119, 194.

Grouse, ruffed (pheasant), 167.

Hawk:- red-tailed, 169, 187.

sparrow, 174, 187.

Hieracium, 122.

Houstonia, 23, 61, 85, 93.

Humming-bird, ruby-throated, 109, 178, 191.

Indigo-bird, 6, 9, 13, 17, 47, 55, 72, 78, 110, 111, 121, 204.

Jay, blue, 178, 189.

Kingbird, 13, 87.

Kinglet, golden-crowned, 97.

Lady's-slipper, yellow, 178.

Lizard, 43, 55.

Locust, seventeen-year, 55, 70, 83, 114, 149.

Magnolia, 136, 148.

Martin, purple, 6, 185.

Maryland yellow-throat, 6, 13, 47, 61, 70, 185.

Milkweed, 92, 142.

Mistletoe, 110.

Mocking-bird, 6, 78, 82, 94, 183.

Mountain Laurel, 132, 135, 147, 169, 173, 176.

Nuthatch, white-breasted (Carolina), 58, 61, 82.

Oriole:- Baltimore, 78.

orchard, 13, 78, 99, 111, 185.

Oven-bird, 31, 33, 42, 122, 196.

Oxalis:- violet, 34, 61, 85.

yellow, 85.

Pentstemon, 61, 122.

Pewee, wood, 6, 17, 33, 62, 71, 78, 99, 117, 135.

Phlox, 23, 34, 61, 85, 122.

Ph?be, 28, 41, 207.

Pink, Indian, 15.

Quail, 6, 71, 122.

Ragwort (Senecio), 93, 122.

Raven, 130.

Redstart, 6, 13, 25, 108, 117.

Rhododendron, 135-137, 147, 169, 173, 176, 181.

Robin, 96, 207, 210.

Rue anemone, 62, 85.

Saxifrage, 34.

Sparrow:- Bachman's (see Finch).

chipping, 6, 13, 26, 99, 111, 193, 207.

field, 6, 13, 17, 25, 47, 55, 62, 67, 70, 87, 117, 135, 193.

house (English) 93, 183, 185.

song, 4, 194, 205, 210.

vesper, 194, 207, 210.

white-crowned, 96.

white-throated, 6, 26, 95, 135, 142, 208.

Specularia, 122.

Spring beauty, 61, 85.

Stonecrop, white, 34.

Swallow:- rough-winged, 22, 87, 88, 187.

tree (white-bellied), 187, 205, 207.

Sweet bush, 137.

Swift, chimney, 189.

Tanager:- scarlet, 20, 24, 33, 41, 118, 131, 135, 162.

summer, 3, 6, 13, 17, 20, 47, 70, 78, 120, 131.

Thrasher (brown thrush), 6, 7, 13, 17, 33, 82, 99, 111, 183, 207.

Thrush:- gray-cheeked, 141.

hermit, 207.

Louisiana water, 163.

olive-backed (Swainson's), 7, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 24, 133, 208.

Wilson's (veery), 13, 14, 25, 111.

wood, 6, 13, 14, 17, 33, 47, 87, 99, 117, 120, 135.

Titmouse, tufted, 13, 14, 61, 70.

Tulip-tree, 178, 193.

Tupelo, 23.

Turkey, wild, 81, 130, 140.

Viburnum, maple-leaved, 34.

Violet, bird-foot, 34, 85.

Vireo:- red-eyed, 6, 13, 33, 42, 47, 55, 70.

solitary, 207.

white-eyed, 6, 9, 13, 17, 47, 110, 121, 204, 207.

yellow-throated, 9, 13, 33, 70, 99, 117.

Vulture:- black (carrion crow), 111, 188.

turkey, 6, 188.

Warbler:- bay-breasted, 6, 28, 32, 38, 49, 208.

Blackburnian, 30, 31, 38, 204.

black-poll, 6, 12, 19, 28, 32, 38, 42, 49, 61, 81, 96, 117, 198, 204, 208.

black-throated blue, 12, 31, 32, 37, 135, 157.

black-throated green, 28, 31, 135, 156, 202.

blue-winged, 20, 22, 71, 79, 80.

blue yellow-backed, 21, 134, 135.

Canadian, 21, 22, 23, 117, 135, 204.

Cape May, 32, 37, 39, 198, 200, 204, 208.

cerulean, 53.

chestnut-sided, 12, 25, 117, 204.

Connecticut, 14.

golden-winged, 13, 110, 120, 195.

hooded, 7, 48, 135, 146, 156, 203.

Kentucky, 9, 13, 14, 19, 24, 35, 47, 49, 109, 110, 116, 122, 132, 135, 156, 202-204.

magnolia, 19, 30, 32, 37, 117, 204.

mourning, 206.

myrtle (yellow-rumped), 6, 12, 32, 39, 198, 204, 207, 208.

Nashville, 195.

palm (red-poll), 32, 38, 117, 204, 207.

pine, 25, 175, 207.

prairie, 6, 21, 25, 110, 121, 203, 207.

Tennessee, 195.

Wilson's blackcap, 136, 204.

yellow (golden), 12, 99, 108, 185, 203,

yellow-throated, 72, 73, 75, 80.

Water-thrush, Louisiana, 163.

Whippoorwill, 143.

Wintergreen, striped, 34.

Woodpecker:- downy, 191.

golden-winged, 66, 190.

hairy, 30, 190.

pileated, 191.

red-cockaded, 67, 73, 80, 191.

red-headed, 80, 190, 191.

Wren:- Bewick's, 4.

Carolina (mocking), 6, 13, 17, 25, 26, 28, 42, 47, 55, 71, 109, 162.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] If I could have my way, he should be known as the doorstep sparrow. The name would fit him to a nicety.

[2] It was not the top of the mountain; so I am now informed, on the best of authority. I followed the map, but misunderstood the man who drew it. It was a map of some other route, and I did not see the top of the mountain, after all.

[3] The Auk, vol. iii. p. 103.

[4] Both these warblers-the Nashville and the Tennessee-were named by Wilson from the places where the original specimens were shot. Concerning the Tennessee warbler he sets down the opinion that "it is most probably a native of a more southerly climate." It would be a pity for men to cease guessing, though the shrewdest are certain to be sometimes wrong.

[5] The Auk, vol. iii. p. 175.

[6] The Auk, vol. vi. p. 120.

[7] Ibid., vol. v. p. 267.

[8] The Auk, vol. iii. p. 315. Of sixty-two species seen by me during the last four days of April, eleven are not given by Dr. Fox, namely, Wilson's thrush, black-poll warbler, bay-breasted warbler, Cape May warbler, black-throated blue warbler, palm warbler, chestnut-sided warbler, blue golden-winged warbler, bobolink, Acadian flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo.

[9] See Dr. Fox's list.