The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-20

Anger After the Most Cunning Lures
Have Failed to Attract. ...
Ihere are yet some places where the
heavy foot of man has not hammered a
path upon the earth's tender face, where
natures green things grow in undis-
turbed luxuriance. Across the glades,
In sunlight and moonlight and black
dark, the beasts of the woods drift as
Silently as shadows, and the winds which
move slowly among the branches bear
not faint of mans making. Deep in
the soil rest the yet unrotted roots of the
primeval forest. The berries turn from
green to red and then to purple ungath-
cred, save by the birds, and the fruits of
the waste places drop to the ground I'M
plucked. Thick grasses grow where the
sun falls, but for the most part the earth
Is covered only by tiny struggling
blades, which win their way upward
through the mold of drifted leaves.
Stretching aWayi in all directions between
the giant boles are dim aisles, rooted by
curving limbs, and no stranger ever saw
them without being carried back in
memory to some vast and family in
censed cathedral from whose far end
the organ pealed soemnly. So thiclIly
stand the trees, and so interlaced are
their tentacles, that the sun reaches the
ground only in patches of yellow bright
ness. 1t would seem a checkerboard
done in black and gold but for the fact
that as the breeze stirs the limbs the
bright squares shift oddly to and fro.
Near to the ground on the northern side
Of these great trees grow smooth green
tufts of moss and from the southern
sides of them, bound in rougher and
thicker bark, spring the largest limbs.
These Jotuns of the woods stood in full
height and strength when the fighting
Five Nations came from the east to
harry the fish eaters, and they stand
to-day as guides to the lonely hunter
who makes his way between them on
the sharp, deeply imprinted hoofmarks
of the deer. They are of elm and beech
and oak and pine, but the stoutest of
them all is the black hickory, which
rises columnar and has in its heart the
strength and springiness of Toledo steel.
From the black hickory, when it is
brought to the uses of man, come
wagon-spokes and tongues and shafts
for golf clubs and all wooden things
that are to be subjected to heavy, con-
tinuous and varied strains. No man
has yet had the interior Of his house fin
iehed in black hickory, polished but un-
stained, because no man has yet been
wise enough. These woods, still un-
SCARED by the axe, into whose shadows
man comes but seldom, are thrilling
now to the voices of a thousand birds
returned from their outing in the South.
Far from the depths of some brake
comes the wild and musical liquidity of
the hermit thrush The flute-like note
of the veery thrush, a dweller in deep
forests, answers it. The gurgling bub-
BILE of the golden crowned wren, the
finer song of it's ruby-crowned cousin, !
the babel of catbirds, blackbirds, rob-
ms. starlngs, grossbeaks, tanagers and
vireos rings as truly in the far northern
woods as in the meadoWlands of the |
South when all this region is locked in |
the grip of ice. 1t would seem that to |
woods and gladcs of northern Wisconsin |
almost every variety Of our tree-breed-
ers come in May and June.
Sung to by the birds, chartered at by |
the squirrels, mirroring the forms of |
deer, wolves, foxes, wolverines, badg- /
ers. always singing or murmurine it
self, goes a broad and deep creek on its
tourney to the blue lake twenty miles
away. 1t is forty yards wide here and
there, and in the East would be called
a river In the West, where every
thing ''bulks big" it is sometimes belit-
tied as "branch." When it rattles
over stony shadows it is not more than
two feet in depth. On certain fiat and
JoIo ,ix- dpntb iG ra1ncp6 |
to six inches, and then it looks like a
broad sheet of crystal moving so
smoothly and evenly that it cannot be
seen to move at all For the most part,
however, its surface runs five feet
above it's bottom, and every mile or so
IT plunges into circular pool, some
times sixty feet across and of a depth
unknown. These pools come always be-
low swift decline, and have been worn
by the action of the water through
countless centuries. They seem blue in
the half light that Sits through the
trees They are smooth to the eye and
turrentless, but on them
swim round and round leaves and lit
tie bits of wood and drowned insects
until they reach the lower edge of the
circle and are borne away upon the
hurrying ripples. Although it is semi
dark above, the wonderful clearness of |
the water is shown by the fact that a
spoon dropped down may be seen faint
ly glimmering twenty feet below the
angler 1t is very silent about them,
save by a steady hum of tiny and the
voices of birds, so that the leap and
splash of the trout may be heard hun
dred yards away. They are rockribbed
always, with precipitous banks; they
are. in fact, vast bowls let into the
EARTH The edges of many of them are
clear of underbrush and the limbs of
the great trees do not often hang so
low that a cast will be baked. In these
pools are the homes of the old men of {
The red-spotted tribe. The younger |
members of that famous family live in
the racing creek proper, or hang about |
below the shallow falls, waiting for :
such things as Providence may send
hem. There are brook trout, yes, in :
,trer parts of America, but they are :
not the brook trout of the northern Wis
,onsin pools, Each Of these streams 8
makes into Lake Superior, and the /
waters Of Superior are so cold that no C
nan may battle III Them even i'll August. =
va +bo teD1pera tire of the abVSma1 | [