Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1881-06-20
A West Texas Adventure.

German house-carpenter named Vert An
spach. and colored boy called "Grant"
had set out that day for a load of honey.
A load of honey will sound oddly to
readers East, perhaps, but that is the
way we get it here. Wild honey, rich
stores oft, is laid up by the native bees.
The settlers often have resort to "bee-
tree" when their stock of sugar and mo-
lasses runs low. The honey is drained
from the comb and put away in jars;
ana the wax makes excellent candles.
Twelve or thirteen miles up north of
our location, in the canon of Lipan Greek
headquarters of Wichita River), there
is "bee's nest" which has supplied us
and the families of three other stockmen
for the last four years.
This enormous beehive is in the cliff
on the north side of the canon, fronting
south.
The entrance to it is up some forty
feet above the creek-bed, where there is
a horizontal crack eight or ten inches
wide, running along the face of the prec-
ipice for four or five hundred feet.
This crack opens back into recesses in
the shattered crags behind and here
the bees, colony on colony, have their
nests and have laid up honey for many
years.
By going round and operating from
the top of the cliff, we have at odd times
dislodged considerable portions of the
rock with blasts of gunpowder and crow
bars-suficient to secure many hogs
heads of comb.
Still deeper down in great pits and
holes, there seems to be vast deposit of
old. thick, black candied honey, which
has been drained from the tiers of comb
above, year after year.
Lower down on the face of the cliff,
the honey, especially on very hot days.
weeps and oozes out at little cracks and
seams of the fssured sandstone-so much
so that the creek bank is completely
honey-soaked, and the water mile or
two below will be perceptibly sweetened.
Much of this escaping honey the bees
themselves carry back up the face of the
cliff.
On pleasant June day the canon and
high above it, the air, will be darkened
by the incoming and outgoing clouds of
bees, millions on millions of them. along
the whole length of the crevlce. The
ordinary drowsy hum of a hive is here
intensified into deep, solemn roar dis
tinctly audible mile below.
To 90 honey gathering there on a
summer day might be a perilous bust
ness, We have always made our raids
on the nest during the cold weather,
generally on some chilly day toward
Christmas when the bees are lying tor
pid and a winter silence has fallen upon
this whole vast apiary.
It was one of the last days of Novem-
Der, and when we started that morning
the weather was quite warm. almost
"muggy," with thin, blush fog rising
from the prairie, which had lately been
| burned over and lay coal-black under
foot.
But we had not gone more than eight
or ten miles when "norther" came
down on US in full blast. The first We
) saw of it was sudden whlrling of the
r fog over the tops of bunch of mezquits
out to our left, Then came puff Of
cold air as damp and chilling as when
in summer one steps into cellar.
A minute later, this monitory Whit
was followed by second puff, perfect
3 gust, which sent our hats whirling, and
upset the half hogsheads off the spring
board.
The norther was upon US!
, That is the way these freezing gales
always come here; sometimes they dom
even give one time to get on ones great
| coat and mittens. How cold they are
and how they cut through body! II
half an hour the mercury will fall forty
and fifty degrees.
Often rain, sleet, and sometimes snow
e come with it.
e No one tries to do anything during :
norther here. You cannot even get ;
> blacksmith to shoe your horse while /;
!, norther is blowing. and it often blow
/ three days at bout.
s The folks "den up" and keepa grea
e fire going. You will not see a persol
:. stirring out anywhere, no old settler a
? least, even in the village.
When the norther struck us, we Sc
4 out to 90 back home but as the canol
d was now no very great distance ahead
d We drove on and got into that at plac
e about two miles below the "great bees
: nest"
The cliffs here broke the force of th
gale, and selecting spot where bi
,. rift of drift stuff had been lodged agains
r the rocks by floods. we built roarin
V fire and made shed, partly of the hall
g hogsheads and spring-boards and partl
:, of driftwood and brush. Here we mad
V ourselves comfortable. gave the mule