LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN TENNESSEE
from SPRING NOTES FROM
TENNESSEE
BY
Bradford Torrey (1896 - Federal Writers Project)
LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN was at first a disappointment.
I went home discouraged.
The place was spoiled, I thought. About
the fine inn were cheap cottages, as if
one had come to a second-class summer
resort ; while the lower slopes of the mountain,
directly under Lookout Point on the
side toward the city, were given up to a
squalid negro settlement, and, of all things, a
patent-medicine factory, a shameful desecration,
it seemed to me. I was half ready
to say I would go there no more. The prospect
was beautiful, so much there was no
denying ; but the air was thick with smoke,
and, what counted for ten times more, the
eye itself was overclouded. A few northern
warblers were chirping in the evergreens
along the edge of the summit, between the
inn and the Point, black-polls and baybreasts,
with black-throated greens and Carolina
wrens ; and near them I saw with
pleasure my first Tennessee phoebes. In the
street car, on the way back to Chattanooga,
I had for my fellow-passengers a group of
Confederate veterans from different parts of
the South, one of whom, a man with an
empty sleeve, was showing his comrades an
interesting war-time relic, a bit of stone
bearing his own initials. He had cut them
in the rock while on duty at the Point thirty
years before, I heard him say, and now, remembering
the spot, and finding them still
there, he had chipped them off to carry home.
These are all the memories I retain of my
first visit to a famous and romantic place
that I had long desired to see.
My second visit was little more remunerative,
and came to an untimely and inglorious
conclusion. Not far from the inn I noticed
what seemed to be the beginning of an old
mountain road. It would bring me to St.
Elmo, a passing cottager told me ; and I
somehow had it fast in my mind that St.
Elmo was a particularly wild and attractive
woodland retreat somewhere in the valley,
a place where a pleasure-seeking naturalist
would find himself happy for at least an
hour or two, if the mountain side should
insufficiently detain him. The road itself
looked uncommonly inviting, rough and deserted,
with wild crags above and old forest
below ; and without a second thought I took
it, idling downward as slowly as possible,
minding the birds and plants, or sitting for
a while, as one shady stone after another
offered coolness and a seat, to enjoy the
silence and the prospect. Be as lazy as I
could, however, the road soon gave signs of
coming to an end ; for Lookout Mountain,
although it covers much territory and presents
a mountainous front, is of a very modest
elevation. And at the end of the way
there was no sylvan retreat, but a village ;
yes, the same dusty little suburb that I had
passed, and looked away from, on my way
up. That was St. Elmo ! and, with my
luncheon still in my pocket, I boarded the
first car for the city. One consolation remained
: I had lived a pleasant hour, and
the mountain road had made three additions
to my local ornithology, a magnolia warbler,
a Blackburnian warbler, and a hairy
woodpecker.
There was nothing for it but to laugh at
myself, and try again ; but it was almost a
week before I found the opportunity. Then
(May 7) I made a day of it on the mountain,
mostly in the woods along the western bluffs.
An oven-bird's song drew me in that direction,
to begin with ; and just as the singer
had shown himself, and been rewarded with
an entry as " No. 79 "
in my Tennessee catalogue,
a cuckoo, farther away, broke into a
shuffling introductory measure that marked
him at once as a black-bill. Till now I had
seen yellow-bills only, and though the voice
was perhaps a sufficient identification, a
double certainty would be better, especially
in the retrospect. Luckily it was a short
chase, and there sat the bird, his snowy
throat swelling as he cooed, while his red
eye-ring and his abbreviated tail-spots gave
him a clear title to count as " No. 80."
As I approached the precipitous western
edge of the mountain, I heard, just below,
the sharp, wiry voice of a Blackburnian
warbler ; a most splendid specimen, for in
a moment more his orange-red throat shone
like fire among the leaves. From farther
down rose the hoarse notes of a blackthroated
blue warbler and two or three blackthroated
greens.
Here were comfortable, well-shaded boulders and delightful prospects, a place to
stay in ; but behind me stood a grove of
small pine-trees, out of which came now and
then a warbler's chip ; and in May, with
everything on the move, and anything possible,
invitations of that kind are not to be
refused. Warbler species are many, and
there is always another to hope for. I
turned to the pines, therefore, as a matter of
course, and was soon deeply engaged with a
charming bevy of northward-bound passengers,
myrtle-birds, palm warblers, blackthroated
blues (of both sexes), a female
Cape May warbler (the first of her sex that
I had seen) magnolias, bay-breasts, and
many black-polls. It makes a short story
in the telling ; but it was long in the doing,
and yielded more excitement than I dare
try to describe. To and fro I went among
the low trees (their lowness a most fortunate
circumstance), slowly and with all
quietness, putting my glass upon one bird
after another as something stirred among the
needles, and hoping every moment for some
glorious surprise. In particular, I hoped
for a cerulean warbler ; but this was not the
cerulean's day, and, if I had but known it,
these were not the cerulean's trees. None
but enthusiasts in the same line will be able
to appreciate the delight of such innocent
"collecting," birds in the memory instead
of specimens in a bag. Even on one's home
beat it quickens the blood ; how much more,
then, in a new field, where a man is almost a
stranger to himself, and rarities and novelties
seem but the order of the day. Again and
again, morning and afternoon, I traversed
the little wood, leaving it between whiles for
a rest under the big oaks on the edge of the
cliffs, whence, through green vistas, I gazed
upon the farms of Lookout Valley and
the mountains beyond. A scarlet tanager
called, my second one here, wood thrush
voices rang through the mountain side forest,
a single thrasher was doing his bravest from
the tip of a pine (our
" brown mockingbird
"
is anything but a skulker when the
lyrical mood is on him), while wood pewees,
red-eyed vireos, yellow-throated vireos, blackand-
white creepers, and I do not remember
what else, joined in the chorus. Just after
noon an oven-bird gave out his famous aerial
warble. To an aspiring soul even a mountain
top is but a perch, a place from which
to take wing.
All these birds, it will be noticed, were
such as I might have seen in Massachusetts ;
and indeed, the general appearance of things
about me was pleasantly homelike. Here
was much of the pretty striped wintergreen,
a special favorite of mine, with bird-foot
violets, the common white saxifrage (dear
to memory as the "
Mayflower
"
of my childhood),
the common wild geranium (cranesbill,
which we were told was "
good for
canker "), and maple-leaved viburnum. One
of the loveliest flowers was the pink oxalis,
and one of the commonest was a pink phlox ;
but I was most pleased, perhaps, with the
white stonecrop {Sedum ternaturn), patches
of which matted the ground, and just now
were in full bloom. The familiar look of
this plant was a puzzle to me. I cannot
remember to have seen it often in gardens,
and I am confident that I never found it before
in a wild state except once, fifteen years
ago, at the Great Falls of the Potomac.
Yet here on Lookout Mountain it seemed
almost as much an old friend as the saxifrage
or the cranesbill.
I ate my luncheon on Sunset Eock, which
literally overhangs the mountain side, and
commands the finest of valley prospects ;
and then, after another turn through the
pines, where the warblers were still busy
with their all-day meal, but not the new
warbler, for which I was still looking, I
crossed the summit and made the descent
by the St. Elmo road, as before. How long
I was on the way I am unable to tell ; I had
learned the brevity of the road, and, like a
schoolboy with his tart, I made the most
of it. Midway down I caught sudden sight
of an olive bird in the upper branch of a
tree, with something black about the crown
and the cheek. " What 's that ?
"
I exclaimed 5
and on the instant the stranger flew across
the road and up the steep mountain side.
I pushed after him in hot haste, over the
huge boulders, and there he stood on the
ground, singing, a Kentucky warbler.
Seeing him so hastily, and on so high a
perch, and missing his yellow under-parts, I
had failed to recognize him. As it was, I
now heard his song for the first time, and
rejoiced to find it worthy of its beautiful
author : Iclurwee, Idurwee, Idurwee, Idurwee,
Idurwee ; a succession of clear, sonorous dissyllables,
in a fuller voice than most warblers
possess, and with no flourish before or after.
Like the bird's dress, it was perfect in its
simplicity. I felt thankful, too, that I had
waited till now to hear it. Things should
be desired before they are enjoyed. It was
another case of the schoolboy and his tart ;
and I went home good-humored. Lookout
Mountain was not wholly ruined, after all.
The next day found me there again, to
my own surprise, for I had promised myself
a trip down the river to Shellmound. In
all the street cars, as well as in the city
newspapers, this excursion was set forth as
supremely enjoyable, a luxury on no account
to be missed, a fine commodious steamer,
and all the usual concomitants. The kind
people with whom I was sojourning, on Cameron
Hill, hastened the family breakfast
that I might be in season ; but on arriving
at the wharf I found no sign of the steamer,
and, after sundry attempts to ascertain the
condition of affairs, I learned that the
steamer did not run now. The river was
no longer high enough, it was explained ; a
smaller boat would go, or might be expected
to go, some hours later. Little disposed to
hang about the landing for several hours.
and feeling no assurance that so doing would
bring me any nearer to Shellmound, I made
my way back to the Read House, and took
a car for Lookout Mountain. In it I sat
face to face with the same conspicuous placard,
announcing an excursion for that day
by the large and commodious steamer Soand-
So, from such a wharf, at eight o'clock.
But I then noticed that intending passengers
were invited, in smaller type, to call at
the office of the company, where doubtless
it would be politely confided to them that
the advertisement was a " back number."
So the mistake was my own, after all. and,
as the American habit is, I had been blaming
the servants of the public unjustly.
I was no sooner on the summit than I
hastened to the pine wood. At first it
seemed to be empty, but after a little, hearing
the drawling kree, Jcree, kree^ of a blackthroated
blue, I followed it, and found the
bird. Next a magnolia dropped into sight,
and then a red-cheeked Cape May, the second
one I had ever seen, after fifteen or
twenty years of expectancy. He threaded
a leafless branch back and forth on a level
with my eyes. I was glad I had come.
Soon another showed himself, and presently
it appeared that the wood, as men speak of
such things, was full of them. There were
black-polls, also, with a Blackburnian, a baybreast,
and a good number of palm warblers,
(typical palmarum, to judge from the pale
tints); but especially there were Cape Mays,
including at least two females. As to the
number of males it is impossible to speak ;
I never had more than two under my eye
at once, but I came upon them continually,
they were always in motion, of course,
being warblers, till finally, as I put my
glass on another one, I caught myself saying,
in a tone of disappointment,
"
Only a
Cape May." But yesterday I might as well
have spoken of a million dollars as "only a
million." So soon does novelty wear off.
The magnolia and the Blackburnian were in
high feather, and made a gorgeous pair as
chance brought them side by side in the
same tree. They sang with much freedom ;
but the Cape Mays kept silence, to my deep
regret, notwithstanding the philosophical
remarks just now volunteered about the advantages
derivable from a bird's gradual
disclosure of himself. Such pieces of wisdom, I have noticed, when by chance they
do not fall into the second or third person,
are commonly applied to the past rather
than the present; a man's past being, in
effect, not himself, but another. In morals,
as in archery, the target should be set at a
fair distance. The Cape May's song is next
to nothing, suggestive of the black-poll's,
I am told, but I would gladly have bought
a ticket to hear it.
The place might have been made on purpose
for the use to which it was now put.
The pinery, surrounded by hard-wood forest,
was like an island ; and the warblers,
for the most past, had no thought of leaving
it. Had they been feeding in the hard
wood, miles of tall trees, I should have
lost them in short order. At the same time,
the absence of undergrowth enabled me to
move about with all quietness, so that none
of them took the least alarm. Not a blackthroated
green was seen or heard, though
yesterday they had been in force both
among the pines and along the cliffs. A
flock of myrtle warblers were surprisingly
late, it seemed to me ; but it was my last
sight of them.
The reader will perceive that I was not
exploring Lookout Mountain, and am in no
position to set forth its beauties. It is
eighty odd miles long, we are told, and in
some places more than a dozen miles wide.
I visited nothing but the northern point, the
Tennessee end, the larger part of the mountain
being in Georgia ; and even while there
I looked twice at the birds, and once at the
mountain itself.
At noon, I lay for a long time upon a
flat boulder under the tall oaks of the western
bluff, looking down upon the lower
woods, now in tender new leaf and most
exquisitely colored. There are few fairer
sights than a wooded mountain side seen
from above ; only one must not be too far
above, and the forest should be mainly deciduous.
The very thought brings before
my eyes the long, green slopes of Mount
Mansfield as they show from the road near
the summit, beauty inexpressible and
never to be forgotten ; and miles of autumn
color on the sides of Kinsman, Cannon,
and Lafayette, as I have enjoyed it by the
hour, stretched in the September sunshine on
the rocks of Bald Mountain. Perhaps the
earth itself will never be fully enjoyed till
we are somewhere above it. The Lookout
woods, as I now saw them, were less magnificent
in sweep, but hardly less beautiful.
And below them was the valley bottom,
Lookout Valley, once the field of armies,
now the abode of peaceful industry : acres
of brown earth, newly sown, with no trace
of greenness except the hedgerows along the
brooks and on the banks of Lookout Creek.
And beyond the valley was Kaccoon Mountain,
wooded throughout; and behind that,
far away, the Cumberland range, blue with
distance.
A phoebe came and perched at my elbow,
dropping a curtsey with old-fashioned politeness
by way of " How are you, sir ?
" and a
little afterward was calling earnestly from
below. This is one of the characteristic
birds of the mountain, and marks well the
difference in latitude which even a slight
elevation produces. I found it nowhere in
the valley country, but it was common on
Lookout and on Walden's Ridge. Then,
behind me on the summit, another northern
bird, the scarlet tanager, struck up a
labored, rasping, breathless tune, hearty,
but broken and forced. I say labored and
breathless : but, happily, the singer was unaware
of his infirmity (or can it be I was
wrong?), and continued without interruption
for at least half an hour. If he was
uncomfortably short-breathed, he was very
agreeably long-winded. Oven-birds sang at
intervals throughout the day, and once I
heard again the black-billed cuckoo. Yes,
Hooker was right : Lookout Mountain is
Northern, not Southern. But then, as if to
show that it is not exactly Yankee land, in
spite of oven-bird and black-bill, and notwithstanding
all that Hooker and his men
may have done, a cardinal took a long turn
at whistling, and a Carolina wren came to
his support with a cheery, cheery. A faraway
crow was cawing somewhere down the
valley, no very common sound hereabout ;
a red-eye, our great American missionary,
was exhorting, of course ; a black-poll, on his
way to British America, whispered something,
it was impossible to say what ; and a
squirrel barked. I lay so still that a blackand-
white creeper took me for a part of the
boulder, and alighted on the nearest treetrunk.
He goes round a bole just as he
sings, in corkscrew fashion. Now and then
I caught some of the louder phrases of a
distant brown thrush, and once, when every
one else fell silent, a catbird burst out spasmodically
with a few halting, disjointed eccentricities,
highly characteristic of a bird
who can sing like a master when he will,
but who seems oftener to enjoy talking to
himself. Lizards rustled into sight with
startling suddenness ; and one big fellow
disappeared so instantaneously in "less
than no time," as the Yankee phrase is
that I thought
"
quick as a lizard
"
might
well enough become an adage. Here and
there I remarked a chestnut-tree, the burs
of last year still hanging; and chestnut
oaks were among the largest and handsomest
trees of the wood, as they were among
the commonest. The temperature was perfect,
so says my penciled note. Let the
confession not be overlooked, after all my
railing at the fierce Tennessee sun. It
made all the pleasure of the hour, too, that
there were no troublesome insects. I had
been in that country for ten days, the mercury
had been much of the time above 90,
and I had not seen ten mosquitoes.
I left my boulder at last, though, it would
have been good to remain there till night,
and wandered along the bluffs to the Point.
Here it was apparent at once that the wind
had shifted. For the first time I caught
sight of lofty mountains in the northeast;
the Great Smokies, I was told, and could
well believe it. I sat down straightway and
looked at them, and had I known how
things would turn, I would have looked at
them longer; for in all my three weeks'
sojourn in Chattanooga, that was the only
half-day in which the atmosphere was even
approximately clear. It was unfortunate,
but I consoled myself with the charm of the
foreground, a charm at once softened and
heightened, with something of the magic of
distance, by the very conditions that veiled
the horizon and drew it closer about us.
It is truly a beautiful world that we see
from Lookout Point : the city and its suburbs
; the river with its broad meanderings,
and, directly at our feet, its great Moccasin
Bend ; the near mountains, Baccoon
and Sand mountains beyond Lookout Valley,
and Walden's Eidge across the river ;
and everywhere in the distance hills and
high mountains, range beyond range, culminating
in the Cumberland Mountains in
one direction, and the Great Smokies in
another. And as we look at the fair picture
we think of what was done here, of historic
persons and historic deeds. At the
foot of the cliffs on which we stand is White
House plateau, the battlefield of Lookout
Mountain. Chattanooga itself is spread
out before us, with Orchard Knob, Cameron
Hill, and the national cemetery. Yonder
stretches the long line of Missionary Eidge,
and farther south, recognizable by at least
one of the government towers, is the battlefield
of Chickamauga. Here, if anywhere, we
may see places that war has made sacred.
The feeling of all this is better enjoyed
after one has grown oblivious to the things
which at first do so much to cheapen the
mountain, the hotels, the photographers'
shanties, the placards, the hurrying tourists,
and the general air of a place given over to
showmen. Much of this seeming desecration
is unavoidable, perhaps ; at all events,
it is the part of wisdom to overlook it, as,
fortunately, by the time of my third visit I
was pretty well able to do. If that proves
impossible, if the visitor is of too sensitive a
temperament, to call his weakness by no
worse a name, he can at least betake himself
to the woods, and out of them see
enough, as I did from my boulder, to repay
him for all his trouble.
The battlefield, as has been said, lies at
the base of the perpendicular cliffs which
make the bold northern tip of the mountain,
Lookout Point. I must walk over it,
though there is little to see, and after a final
look at the magnificent panorama I descended
the steps to the head of the " incline,"
or, as I should say, the cable road.
The car dropped me at a sentry-box marked
" Columbus "
(it was easy to guess in what
year it had been named), and thence I
strolled across the plateau, so called in
the narratives of the battle, though it is far
from level, past the Craven house and
Cloud Fort, to the western slope looking
down into Lookout Valley, out of which the
Union forces marched to the assault. The
place was peaceful enough on that pleasant
May afternoon. The air was full of music,
and just below me were apple and peach
orchards and a vineyard.
In such surroundings, half wild, half tame,
I had hope of finding some strange bird ; it
would be pleasant to associate him with a
spot so famous. But the voices were all
familiar : wood thrushes, Carolina wrens,
bluebirds, summer tanagers, catbirds, a
Maryland yellow-throat, vireos (red-eyes and
white-eyes), goldfinches, a field sparrow (the
dead could want no sweeter requiem than he
was chanting, but the wood pewee should
have been here also), indigo-birds, and chats.
In one of the wildest and roughest places
a Kentucky warbler started to sing, and I
plunged downward among the rocks and
bushes (here was maiden-hair fern, I remember),
hoping to see him. It was only my
second hearing of the song, and it would
be prudent to verify my recollection; but
the music ceased, and I saw nothing. At the
turn, where the land begins to decline westward,
I came to a low, semicircular wall
of earth. Here, doubtless, on that fateful
November morning, when clouds covered the
mountain sides, the Confederate troops
meant to make a stand against the invader.
Now a wilderness of young blue-green persimmon-
trees had sprung up about it, as
about the Craven house was a similar growth
of sassafras. I had already noticed the extreme
abundance of sassafras (shrubs rather
than trees) in all this country, and especially
on Missionary Ridge.
With my thoughts full of the past, while
my senses kept watch of the present, I returned
slowly to the "
incline," where I had
five minutes to wait for a downward car. It
had been a good day, a day worth remembering
; and just then there came to my ear the
new voice for which I had been on the alert :
a warbler's song, past all mistake, sharp,
thin, vivacious, in perhaps eight syllables,
a song more like the redstart's than anything
else I could think of. The singer was
in a tall tree, but by the best of luck, seeing
how short my time was, the opera-glass fell
upon him almost of itself, a hooded warbler
; my first sight of him in full dress (he
might have been rigged out for a masquerade,
I thought), as it was my first hearing
of his song. If it had been also my last
hearing of it, I might have written that the
hooded warbler, though a frequenter of low
thickets, chooses a lofty perch to sing from.
So easy is it to generalize ; that is, to tell
more than we know. The fellow sang again
and again, and, to my great satisfaction,
a Kentucky joined him, a much better
singer in all respects, and much more becomingly
dressed; but I gave thanks for
both. Then the car stopped for me, and we
coasted to the base, where the customary
gang of negroes, heavily chained, were repairing
the highway, while the guard, a
white man, stood over them with a rifle. It
was a strange spectacle to my eyes, and suggested
a considerable postponement of the
millennium ; but I was glad to see the men
at work.
Two days afterward (May 10), in spite of
thunder in the morning
and one of the
safest of weather saws, I made my final excursion
to Lookout, going at once to the
warblers' pines. There were few birds in
them. At all events, I found few; but
there is no telling what might have happened,
if the third specimen that came under my
glass after a black-poll and a bay-breast
had not monopolized my attention till I
was driven to seek shelter. That was the
day when I needed a gun ; for I suppose it
must be confessed that even an opera-glass
observer, no matter how much in love he
may be with his particular method of study,
and no matter how determined he may be to
stick to it, sees a time once in a great while
when a bird in the hand would be so much
better than two in the bush that his fingers
fairly itch for something to shoot with.
From what I know of one such man, I am
sure it would be exaggerating their tenderness
of heart to imagine observers of this
kind incapable of taking a bird's life under
any circumstances. In fact, it may be
partly a distrust of their own self-restraint,
under the provocations of curiosity, that
makes them eschew the use of firearms altogether.
My mystery on the present occasion was
a female warbler, of so much I felt reasonably
assured ; but by what name to call
her, that was a riddle. Her upper parts
were " not olive, but of a neutral bluish
gray," with light wing-bars,
" not conspicuous,
but distinct," while her lower parts
were "dirty, but unstreaked." What at
once impressed me was her "bareheaded
appearance
"
(I am quoting my penciled
memorandum), with a big eye and a light
eye-ring, like a ruby-crowned kinglet, for
which, at the first glance, I mistook her.
If my notes made mention of any dark
streaks or spots underneath, I would pluck
up courage and hazard a glorious guess, to
be taken for what it might be worth. As it
is, I leave guessing to men better qualified,
for whose possible edification or amusement
I have set down these particulars.
While I was pursuing the stranger, but
not till I had seen her again and again, and
secured as many
"
points
"
as a longer ogling
seemed likely to afford me, it began thundering
ominously out of ugly clouds, and I
edged toward some woodland cottages not
far distant. Then the big drops fell, and I
took to my heels, reaching a piazza just in
time to escape a torrent against which pinetrees
and umbrella combined would have
been as nothing. The lady of the house and
her three dogs received me most hospitably,
and as the rain lasted for some time we had
a pleasant conversation (I can speak for one,
at least) about dogs in general and particular
(a common interest is the soul of talk) ;
in illustration and furtherance of which the
spaniel of the party, somewhat against his
will, was induced to " sit up like a gentleman,"
while I boasted modestly of another
spaniel, Antony by name, who could do
that and plenty of tricks beside, a perfect
wonder of a dog, in short. Thus happily
launched, we went on to discuss the climate
of Tennessee (whatever may be the soul of
talk, the weather supplies it with members
and a bodily substance) and the charms of
Lookout Mountain. She lived there the
year round, she said (most of the cottagers
make the place a summer resort only), and
always found it pleasant. In winter it
was n't so cold there as down below ; at any
rate, it did n't feel so cold, which is the
main thing, of course. Sometimes when she
went to the city, it seemed as if she should
freeze, although she had n't thought of its
being cold before she left home. It is one
form of patriotism, I suppose, parochial
patriotism, perhaps we may call it, that
makes us stand up pretty stoutly for our
own dwelling-place before strangers, however
we may grumble against it among ourselves.
In the present instance, however,
no such qualifying explanation seemed necessary.
In general, I was quite prepared to
believe that life on a mountain top, in a cottage
in a grove, would be found every whit
as agreeable as my hostess pictured it.
The rain slackened after a while, though
it was long in ceasing altogether, and I went
to the nearest railway station (Sunset Station,
I believe) and waited half an hour for
a train to the Point, chatting meanwhile
with the young man in charge of the reliccounter.
Then, at the Point, I waited again
this time to enjoy the prospect and see
how the weather would turn till a train
passed on " the broad gauge
"
below. Just
beyond Fort Cloud it ran into a fine old
forest, and a sudden notion took me to go
straight down through the woods and spend
the rest of the day rambling in that direction.
The weather had still a dubious aspect, but,
with motive enough, some things can be
trusted to Providence, and, the steepness of
the descent accelerating my pace, I was soon
on the sleepers, after which it was but a little
way into the woods. Once there, I quickly
forgot everything else at the sound of a new
song. But was it new ? It bore some resemblance
to the ascending scale of the blue
yellow-back, and might be the freak of some
individual of that species. I stood still, and
in another minute the singer came near and
sang under my eye ; the very bird I had been
hoping for, a cerulean warbler in full
dress ; as Dr. Coues says,
" a perfect little
beauty." He continued in sight, feeding in
rather low branches, an exception to his
usual habit, I have since found, and sang
many times over. His complaisance was a
piece of high good fortune, for I saw no second
specimen. The strain opens with two
pairs of notes on the same pitch, and concludes
with an upward run much like the
blue yellow-back's, or perhaps midway between
that and the prairie warbler's. So
I heard it, I mean to say. But everything
depends upon the ear. Audubon speaks of
it as "
extremely sweet and mellow "
(the
last a surprising word), while Mr. Eidgway
is quoted as saying that the bird possesses
"
only the most feeble notes."
The woods of themselves were well worth
a visit : extremely open, with broad barren
spaces ; the trees tall, largely oak, chestnut
oak, especially, but with chestnut, hickory,
tupelo, and other trees intermingled. Here,
as afterward on Walden's Kidge, I was
struck with the almost total absence of
mosses, and the dry, stony character of the
soil, a novel and not altogether pleasing
feature in the eyes of a man accustomed to
the mountain forests of New England, where
mosses cover every boulder, stump, and
fallen log, while the feet sink into sphagnum
as into the softest of carpets.
Comfortable lounging-places continually
invited me to linger, and at last I sat down
under a chestnut oak, with a big brokenbarked
tupelo directly before me. Over the
top of a neighboring boulder a lizard leaned
in a praying attitude and gazed upon the
intruder. Once in a while some loud-voiced
tree-frog, as I suppose, uttered a grating cry.
A blue-gray gnatcatcher was complaining,
snarling, I might have said; a red-eye, an
indigo-bird, a field sparrow, and a Carolina
wren took turns in singing; and a sudden
chat threw himself into the air, quite unannounced,
and, with ludicrous teetering
motions, flew into the tupelo and eyed me
saucily. A few minutes later, a single cicada
(seventeen-year locust) followed him.
With my glass I could see its monstrous red
eyes and the orange edge of its wing. It kept silence; but without a moment's cessation
the musical hum of distant millions
like it filled the air, a noise inconceivable.
I would gladly have sat longer, as I would
gladly have gone much farther into the
woods, for I had seen none more attractive ;
but a rumbling of thunder, a rapid blackening
of the sky, and a recollection of the
forenoon's deluge warned me to turn back.
And now, for the first time, although I had
been living within sound of locusts for a
week or more, I suddenly came to trees in
which they were congregated. The branches
were full of them. Heard thus near, the
sound was no longer melodious, but harsh
and shrill.
It seemed cruel that my last day on Lookout
Mountain should be so broken up, and
so abruptly and unseasonably concluded,
but so the Fates willed it. My retreat became
a rout, and of the remainder of the
road I remember only the hurry and the
warmth, and two pleasant things, a few
wild roses, and the scent of a grapevine in
bloom; two things so sweet and homelike
that they could be caught and retained by a
man on the run.
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