id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1
value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000000038000 | managing to hold the stone against his head, Pompey challenged his enemy to combat. The buck, nothing loth, drew back to a proper distance, and shutting both eyes, came like a battering _ram_ against the stone on the other side of which was the negro's head. As might have been expected, the challenger went one way, and the challenged the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038001 | other by the recoil, both knocked into insensibility by the concussion. Pompey was taken up for dead, but his wool and the thickness of his scull saved him. He gave the buck a wide berth after that. He regarded him always with a sort of superstitious awe, never being able to comprehend how he butted him through that big stone. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038002 | Explain the matter to him ever so scientifically, demonstrate it on the clearest principles of mechanical philosophy, still Pompey would shake his head, and as he walked away, would mutter to himself, 'de debbil helps dat ram, _sure_. Dere's no use in dis nigger's tryin' to come round _him_. He's a witch, dat ram is, and ain't nuffin else.'" . | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038003 | A DEER TRAPPED--THE RESULT OF A COMBAT--A QUESTION OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY DISCUSSED. We returned the next day to our camping ground. On the "Lower Chain of Ponds," we found our pioneer and his goods all safe, no visitors having passed that way in our absence. Smith knocked over a deer on our passage down. I have said that just above | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038004 | our camp was a dam. It was made in this wise: first, great logs were laid up, across the stream, in the same fashion as the side of a log house, to the height of about twelve feet, properly secured, and upon these, other and smaller logs were laid, side by side, transversely, and sloping up the stream at an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038005 | angle of forty-five degrees, like one side of the roof of a house. These long, slender logs, reached out over and beyond those that were laid up across the stream, the lower part covered with brush, and then with earth, so as to make a tight dam, the upper ends, even when the dam was full, extending several feet above | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038006 | the top water line. These logs, or perhaps they had better be called large and long poles, for, when compared with the foundation timbers, they were nothing more, have, of course, above where they are covered with brush and earth, interstices, or crevices, between them. On our return, and as we came in sight of the dam, I, being in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038007 | the forward boat, saw a small deer, laying stretched out upon these poles, dead, hanging, as it were, by one foot. My impression was, that it had been shot, and dragged up there, and left by our pioneer for the present. We found, however, upon examination, that the deer had walked up on the dam, probably to take a look | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038008 | at what was below, and on the other side, when his foot slipped down between the poles, and he was caught as in a trap. His leg was badly broken, and nearly severed by his efforts to get loose, and the bark of the poles was worn away within reach of his struggles. He had died where he thus got | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038009 | hung; and there he was, stone dead, but not yet cold, when we found him. He was a fine, fat, young deer, and died by one of the thousand accidents to which the wild animals of the forest, as well as man, are exposed. Upon relating this incident to an old hunter, I was told by him that he once, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038010 | while out in the woods, came upon the skeletons of two large bucks, that, in fighting, had got their horns so interlocked and wedged together, that they could not separate them, and thus, locked in the death grapple, they had starved and died. There lay their bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and, bleached | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038011 | by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them yet at home, fast together, as he found them, as one of the curiosities to be met with in the Rackett woods. "I've been thinking," said Spalding, in his quiet way, as we sat towards evening, looking out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038012 | over the pleasant little lake, watching the shadow chasing the retiring sunlight up the sides of the opposite hills, "I've been thinking how differently we act, and feel, and talk--aye, and think, too--out here in these old woods, from what we do when at home and surrounded by civilization. However we four may deny being old, we cannot certainly claim | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038013 | to be young. We have all reached the meridian of life, and though feeling few, if any, of the infirmities of age, still, our next move will be in the downhill direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we talk and act, and think, and feel, too, like boys. I do not speak this reproachfully, but as a fact which develops a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038014 | curious attribute of the human mind." "Well," replied the Doctor, "while it may be curious, it is exceedingly natural. We have thrown off the restraints which society imposes upon us; we have thrown off the cares which the business of life heaps upon us. We have gone back for a season to the freedom, the sports, the sights, the exercises | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038015 | which delighted our boyhood. And can it be called strange that the feelings, the thoughts, and emotions of our youth should come welling up from the long past, or that with the return of boyish emotions, the language and actions of boyhood should be indulged in again?" "You will find," said Smith, "your old feelings of sobriety, of thoughtfulness, your | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038016 | cautiousness, coming back just in proportion as you tire of this wilderness life, and that by the time you are ready to return to civilization, you will have become as staid, sober, and reflective men of the world, as when you started, with as strict a guard upon your expression of sentiment, or opinion, as ever." "It is that 'guard' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038017 | of which you speak," remarked Spalding, "over the emotions, the sentiments of the heart, stifling their expression, and chaining down under a placid exterior their manifestations, that constitutes one of the broad distinctions between youth and manhood. It is when that guard is set, that the process of fossilization, so to speak, begins; and if no relaxing agency intervenes, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038018 | heart becomes cold and hard, even before white hairs gather upon the head. I often imagine that if men who really _think_, who have the power of analyzation, of weighing causes and measuring results, would dismiss that rigid espionage over themselves, would stand in less awe of the world, in less dread of its accusation of change, and with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038019 | fearless frankness of youth, declare the truth, and stand boldly up for the right as they, _at the time_, understand it to be, without reference to consistency of present views and opinions with those of the past, the world would be much better off; progress would have vastly fewer obstacles to contend against. But it is not every man, even | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038020 | of those who _think_, who in politics, in religion, in science, in anything involving a possible charge of inconsistency, of the desertion of a party, a sect, or a principle, dare avow a change of conviction or opinion, however such change may exist. This should not be so. It belittles manhood, and makes slaves and cowards of men. It is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038021 | a proud prerogative, this ability and power of thinking. It is a priceless privilege, this freedom of thought and opinion, and he is a craven who moves on with the heedless and thoughtless crowd, conscious of error, himself a hypocrite and a living lie, through fear of the charge of 'inconsistency,' the accusation of change. 'Speak your opinions of to-day,' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038022 | says Carlyle, 'in words hard as rocks, and your opinions of to-morrow in words just as hard, even though your opinions of to-morrow may contradict your opinions of to-day.' There is a fund of true wisdom in this beautiful maxim, if men would appreciate it. It would correct a vast deal of error in politics, in religion, in philosophy, in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038023 | the social relations of life. Times change, and struggle against it as they may, men's convictions will change with the times. The man who says that his opinions never alter, is to me either a knave or a fool. For a thinking man to remain stationary, when everything else is on the move, is a simple impossibility. Time was when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038024 | the stage coach was the model method of travelling. It carried us six, sometimes eight miles the hour, in comfort and safety. But who thinks of the lumbering stage coach now, with its snail's pace of eight miles the hour, when the locomotive with its long train of cars, lighted up like the street of a city in motion, rushes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038025 | over the smooth rails literally with the speed of the wind. The scream of the steam-whistle has succeeded the old stage-horn, and the iron horse taken the place of those of flesh and blood. Change is written in great glowing letters upon everything. It stands out in blazing capitals everywhere. All things are on the move! Forward! and forward! is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038026 | the word. And who would, who CAN, stand still amidst the universal rush? Only a century ago, from the valley through which the majestic Hudson rolls its everlasting flood, westward to the mighty Mississippi, westward still to the Rocky Mountains, and yet westward to the Pacific, was one vast wilderness; interminable forests, standing in all their primeval grandeur and gloom; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038027 | boundless prairies, covered with profitless verdure, over which the silence of the everlasting past brooded; and above all these, mountain peaks, covered with perpetual snows, upon which the eye of a white man had never looked, stood piercing the sky. From the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi, that old forest has been swept away. The broad prairies have been, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038028 | are being, subjected to the culture of human industry; even the Rocky Mountains have been overleaped, and beyond them is a great State already admitted into the family of the Union, and a territory teeming with an adventurous and hardy population, knocking at its door for admission. The march of civilization has crossed a continent of more than three thousand | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038029 | miles, sweeping away forests, spreading out green fields, planting cities and towns, making the old wilderness to blossom as the rose, scattering life, activity, progress, all along the road it has travelled. The great rivers that rolled in silence through unbroken forests, have become the highways of trade, upon whose bosoms the white sails of commerce are spread, and through | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038030 | whose waters countless steamboats plough their way. These stupendous changes are the results of human energy, and they reach, in their moral prestige, their progressive influence, through every vein and artery of governmental and social compacts, affecting political institutions, shaping national policy, and forcing, by their resistless demonstrations, change and mutations of opinions upon all men. "As it has been | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038031 | in the past century, so it is now, and so it will be through all the long future. Forward, and forward, is the word, and forward will be the word for centuries to come. And why? Because all men here, in this free Republic, are free to think, free to speak, free to will, free to act. No traditions of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038032 | the past bind them; no hereditary policy controls their action; no customs, covered with the dust of ages, fetter them; no physical or intellectual gyves, corroded by the rust of centuries, are eating into their flesh. Because thinking American men everywhere live in the present, ignoring and defying the dead past, and building up the mighty future. Because they 'speak | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038033 | their opinions of TO-DAY in words hard as rocks, and their opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038034 | of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the opinions of a quarter of a century, a decade, a year, a month ago, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038035 | remain unchanged, immutable, fixed as a star always, amidst the new demonstrations looming up like mountains everywhere around us?' "Man's life is short at best; a little point of time, scarcely discernible on the map of ages; his aspirations, his hopes, his ambition, more transient than the lightning's flash; but his opinions may tell for good upon that little point | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038036 | occupied by his generation, and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038037 | rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The cloud and the storm will pass away, and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038038 | brightness and glory of the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak his opinions then of to-day in words hard as rocks, and his opinions of to-morrow in words just as hard.' Let him speak his opinions thus on all subjects within the range of human investigation, upon science, philosophy, politics, religion, morals; and leave to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038039 | little minds to settle the question of consistency or change. Let his be the eagle's flight towards the sun, and theirs to skim in darkness along the ground, like the course of the mousing owl." After it became dark, Smith and Martin went out around the lake night hunting, and the rest retired to our tents. We heard the report | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038040 | of Smith's rifle from time to time, and concluded that we should have to court-martial him for a wanton destruction of deer, contrary to the law we had established for our government on that subject. But on his return, we ascertained that, though having had several shots, he had succeeded in killing or, according to Martin's account, even wounding but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038041 | one, and that a yearling, and the poorest and leanest we had seen since we entered the woods. Though it was thus diminutive in size, Smith declared that he had seen, and shot at, some of the largest deer that ever roamed the forest. He insisted that he had seen some, by the side of which the largest we had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038042 | looked upon by daylight, were mere fawns, and thereupon he undertook to establish a theory that the large deer fed by night and the smaller ones by day. This would have been all well enough, were it not for the fact, understood by every experienced night-hunter, that by the spectral and uncertain light of the lamp, or torch, a deer, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038043 | when seen standing in the water, or on the reedy banks, is in appearance magnified to twice its actual dimensions. To this Smith at last assented, since to deny the proposition, involved the conclusion that he had killed the wrong deer; for the one he shot at, as it stood in the edge of the water, though much smaller than | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038044 | some he had seen, appeared greatly larger than the one he killed. . HOOKING UP TROUT--THE LEFT BRANCH--THE RAPIDS--A FIGHT WITH A BUCK. We started down stream in the morning, towards the forks, intending to ascend the left branch to Little Tupper's Lake. We reached the forks at three o'clock. Directly opposite to where the right branch enters, a small | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038045 | cold stream comes in among a cluster of alder bushes on the eastern shore. At the mouth of this little stream, which one can step across, the trout congregate. We could see them laying in shoals along the bottom; but the sun shone down bright and warm into the clear water, and not a trout would rise to the fly, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038046 | or touch a bait. We wanted some of those trout, and as they refused to be taken in a scientific way and according to art, it was a necessity, for which we were not responsible, which impelled us to a method of capture which, under ordinary circumstances, we should have rejected. I took off the fly from my line, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038047 | fastened upon it half a dozen snells with bare hooks, attached a small sinker, and dropped quietly among them. A large fellow worked his way lazily above where the hooks lay on the bottom, eying me, as if laughing at my folly in attempting to deceive him, with fly or bait. I jerked suddenly, and two of the hooks fastened | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038048 | into him near the tail. That trout was astonished, as were half a dozen or more of his fellows, when they came out of the water tail foremost, struggling with all their might against so vulgar and undignified a manner of leaving their native element. We got as beautiful a string in this way as one would wish to see, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038049 | albeit they laughed at our best skill with fly and bait; and the cream of the matter was, that we had our pick of the shoal. We pitched our tents at the foot of the second rapids, on a high, moss-covered bank. The roar of the water sounded deep and solemn among the old woods, as it went roaring and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038050 | tumbling, and struggling through the gorge. The night winds moaned and sighed among the trees above us, while the night bird's notes came soothingly from the wilderness around as. "What a strange diversity of tastes exists among the people of this world of ours," said the Doctor, addressing himself to me, as we sat in front of our tents, listening | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038051 | to the roar of the waters. "You and I, I take it, enjoy a fortnight or so, among these lakes, and old forests, with a keener relish than Spalding or Smith here. I judge so, because we indulge in these trips every year, while this is their first adventure of the kind. But even you and I, however much we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038052 | may love the woods, however we may enjoy these occasional tramps among their shady solitudes, would not enjoy them as a residence; and yet I have sometimes thought I should love to spend the summers in a forest home, alone with nature, with my pen and books, a fishing-rod and rifle to supply my wants, and a friend to talk | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038053 | with occasionally. "Many years ago, I was out on the Western prairies, some sixty days beyond the region of bread; we had encamped on the banks of a stream, along which a narrow belt of timber grew. More than a quarter of a century has passed since I took that trip to look upon the Rocky Mountains. There was no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038054 | gold region laying beyond them then, or rather, the enterprise of the Anglo-Saxon had not discovered its existence, and the greed of the white man had not made the trail over the mountains, or through their dismal passes, a familiar way. Along in the afternoon we were visited by a trapper, who had, in his wanderings, discovered the smoke of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038055 | our camp fires. He was a weather-beaten, iron man, of the solitudes of nature, who had wandered away from his home in New England, and from civilization, into that limitless wilderness. He was glad to see us, inquired the news from the outer world, talked about York State, Vermont, the Bay State, and then, after an hour's converse, as if | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038056 | his social instincts and sympathies had been satisfied, he shouldered his rifle and started off across the plain, towards a belt of timber lying dim and shadowy, like a low cloud, upon the distant horizon. I watched him for an hour or more, as he trudged away over the rolling prairie, growing less and less to the view, until he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038057 | became like a speck in the distance, and then vanished from my sight. There was a solemn sort of feeling stole over me, as this lonely hunter wended his way into the deep solitudes of the prairies, to be alone with nature, communing only with himself and the things scattered around him by the great Creator. He seemed to be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038058 | contented and happy. How different were his tastes from yours or mine, my friends; and yet I felt as though it would have been easy for me to have been like him, an isolated and solitary man, had circumstances in early life thrown me into a position to have followed the original bent of my nature." "And yet," said Spalding, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038059 | "if you will look into the philosophy of the matter, you will see that this diversity of tastes, as you call it, is not so great after all; that is, that the origin of the impulse which sends some men away from society among the solitudes of the wilderness, and of that which holds others in constant communion with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038060 | busy scenes of life, is very nearly the same. It is the love of adventure, of excitement, a restlessness for something new, a desire for change. This impulse is controlled, shaped by circumstances of early life, by education and association; but the foundation of it at last is the thirst for excitement, the love of adventure. One man wanders away | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038061 | into the wilderness in pursuit of it. Another plunges into society in pursuit of the same thing. These hardy men who are here with us, who were reared on the borders of civilization, enjoy the solitudes of their wilderness quite as much, and upon the same general theory, as we do the society to which we have been accustomed; and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038062 | they plunge alone into the one with quite as much zest as we do into the other, in the pursuit of excitement. Here is Cullen, now, who has spent more time alone in the wilderness than almost any other man outside of the trappers and hunters of the prairies of the West, I appeal to him if it is not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038063 | rather a love of adventure than of nature which sends him on his solitary rambles in the forests?" "May be the Judge is right," replied Cullen, as he rubbed the shavings of plug tobacco in the palm of his left hand with the ball of his right, while he held his short black pipe between his teeth, preparatory to filling | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038064 | it, "may be the Judge is right, I rather think he is, and let me tell you I've met with some queer adventures, as you call them, in these woods too; some that I wouldn't have gone out arter if I'd known what they were to've been afore I started. I've been movin' back from what you call civilization for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038065 | five and twenty year, because I didn't like to live where people were too thick, and where there was nothing but tame life around me. I've a kind of liking for the deer and moose, and haven't any ill will towards, now and then, a wolf or a painter. I like a rifle better than I do the handles of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038066 | a plow, and I'd rayther bring down a ten-pronger than to raise an acre of corn, and I don't care who knows it. There's a place in the world for just such a man as I am yet, and will be till these old woods are gone. Do you see that?" said he, rolling up his pantaloons to his knees, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038067 | revealing a deep scar on both sides of the calf of his leg, as if it had been pierced by a bullet. "And do you see that?" as he exhibited another deep scar above his knee. "And that?" as he showed another on his arm, above the elbow. "Wal, I reckon I had a time of it with the old | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038068 | buck that made them things on my under-pinin', and on my corn-stealer, as they say out West. Fifteen years ago I was over on Tupper's Lake, shantyin' on the high bank above the rocks, just at the outlet, fishin' and huntin', and layin' around loose, in a promiscuous way, all alone by myself, havin' nobody along but the old black | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038069 | dog that you," appealing to Hank Wood, who nodded assent, remember. "That dog," continued Cullen, "was human in his day, and if anybody has another like him, and wants a couple of months lumberin' in the place of him, I'm ready for a trade; he may call at my shanty. Wal, Crop and I had Seen about all there was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038070 | to be looked at about Tupper's Lake, and havin' hearn some pretty tall stories about the deer and moose up about the head of Bog River from an Ingen who'd hunted that section, I mentioned to Crop one mornin' that we'd take a trip into them parts. 'Agreed,' said he, or leastwise he didn't say a word agin it, and, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038071 | by the wag of his tail, I understood him to be agreeable. "Mud Lake, as you've discovered, aint very near now, and it was a good deal farther off then. The settlements hadn't been pushed so far into the woods then as now. But we put out, Crop and I, for Mud Lake; we passed the eight carryin' places afore | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038072 | night, and reached the first chain of ponds while the sun was hangin' like a great torch in the tree-tops. I've seen a good many deer in my day, but the way they stood around in those ponds, and in the shallow water of the river below, among the grass and pond lilies, was a thing to make a man | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038073 | open his eyes _some._ I saw dozens of 'em at a time, and if it didn't seem like a sheep paster I would'nt say it. I had my pick out of the lot, and knocked over a two-year-old for provision for me and Crop. I aint at all poetical, but if there was ever a matter to make a man | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038074 | feel like stringin' rhymes, that evenin' that Crop and I spent on the lower chain of ponds, or little lakes on Bog River, was a thing of that sort. The sun threw his bright red light on the tops of the mountains away off to the East, spreading it all over the lofty peaks, like a golden shawl, while the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038075 | gorges and deep valleys around their base rested in deep and solemn shadow. The loon spoke out clear, like a bugle on the lakes, and his voice went echoin' around among the hills; the frogs were out and out jolly, while the old woods were full of happy voices and merry songs as if all nater was runnin' over with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038076 | gladness and joy; even the night breeze, as it sighed and moaned among the tree-tops, seemed to be whisperin' to itself of the joy and brightness and glory of such an evenin'. As the night gathered, the moon, in her largest growth, came up over the hills and walked like a queen up into the sky, and the bright stars | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038077 | gathered around her, twinklin' and flashin' and dancin', as if merry-makin' in the brightness of her presence. Away down below the bottom of the lake were other mountains and lakes, another moon with bright stars shinin' and twinklin' around her, other broad heavens just as distinct and glorious as those which arched above us. Don't laugh, Judge, for me and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038078 | Crop saw and heard all that I've been describin' to you, and we felt it too, may be quite as deeply as if we'd been bred in colleges and stuffed with the larnin' of the books. "I heard the cry of the painter, the howl of the wolf, and the hoarse bellow of the moose that night, and Crop crept | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038079 | close alongside of me, in our bush-shanty, and answered these forest sounds by a low growl, as if sayin' to himself, that while he'd rayther keep oat of a fight, yet, if necessary, in defence of his master, he was ready to go in. Wal, we started on up stream next mornin', passed the second chain of lakes, and went | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038080 | along up the crooked and windin' course of the stream, till towards night we came in sight of Mud Lake. That lake is anything but handsome to my thinkin'; you saw it was gloomy and solemn enough, situated as it is away up on the top of the mountain, higher than any other waters I know of in these parts. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038081 | All about it are fir, and tamarack, and spruce, the lichens hanging like long grey hair away down from their stinted branches, while all around low bushes grow, and moss, sometimes a foot thick, covers the ground. That, Judge, is the place for black flies and mosquitoes in June. The black flies are all gone before this time in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038082 | summer, but if you'd a taken this trip the latter part of June, you'd have admitted that I'm tellin' no lie. If there's any place in the round world where mosquitoes have longer bills, or the black flies swarm in mightier hosts, I don't know where it is, and shan't go there if I happen to find out its location. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038083 | I've a tolerably thick hide, but if they didn't bite me _some_, I wouldn't say so. But you ought to have seen the deer feedin' on the pond-lilies and grass in that lake I They were like sheep in a pasture; and out some fifty rods from the shore was a great moose, helpin' himself to the eatables that grew | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038084 | there. I laid my jacket down for Crop to watch, and waded quietly in towards where the moose was feedin'. I got within twelve or fifteen rods of him, and spoke to him with my rifle. He heard it, you may guess. Without knowin' who or what hurt him, he plunged right towards me for the shore; but he never | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038085 | got there alive. You ought to have seen the scampering of the deer at the sound of my rifle! Maybe there wasn't much splashin' of the water, and whistlin', and snortin', and puttin' out for the shore among 'em. "The next mornin', I got up just as the sun was risin', and a little way down on the shore of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038086 | the lake I saw a buck. Wal, he was one of 'em--that buck was. The horns on his head were like an old-fashioned round-posted chair, and if they hadn't a dozen prongs on 'em, you may skin me! He wasn't as big as an ox, but a two-year-old that could match him, could brag of a pretty rapid growth. I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038087 | crept up behind a little clump of bushes to about fifteen rods of where he stood on the sandy beach, and sighting carefully at his head, let drive. My gun hung fire a little, owin' to the night-dews, but that buck went down, and after kickin' a moment, laid still, and I took it for granted he was dead. So | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038088 | I laid down my rifle, and went up to where he was, and with my huntin' knife in my hand, took hold of his horn to raise his head so as to cut his throat. If that deer was dead, he came to life mighty quick; for I had no sooner touched him, than he sprang to his feet, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038089 | with every hair standin' straight towards his head, came like a mad bull at me. In strugglin' up he overshot me; and as he made his drive one prong went through the calf of my leg. I plunged my knife into his body, and the blood spirted all over me. But it wasn't no use. He smashed down upon me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038090 | again, and made that hole in my leg above the knee. I handled my knife in a hurry, and made more than one hole in his skin, while he stuck a prong through my arm. I hollered for Crop, who was watching the shanty as his duty was. The old buck and I had it rough and tumble; sometimes one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038091 | a-top, and sometimes the other, and both growin' weak from loss of blood. May be we didn't kick and tussle about, and tear up the sand on the beach of the lake _some!_ The buck was game to the backbone, and had no notion of givin' in, and I had to fight for it, or die; so up and down, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038092 | over and over, and all around, we went for a long time, until Crop made up his mind that my callin' so earnestly meant something, and round the point he came. When he saw what was goin' on, you ought to've seen how _he_ went in! He didn't stop to ask any questions, but as if possessed by all the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038093 | furies of creation he lit upon that buck, and the fight was up. He with his teeth, and I with my knife, settled the matter in less than a minute. But, Judge, let me tell you, that buck was dangerous; and if Crop hadn't been around, may be ther'd have been the bones of man and beast bleachin' on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038094 | sandy beach of Mud Lake! I bound up my wounds as well as I could--but it was tough work backin' my bark canoe over the carryin' places on Bog River, and across the Ingen carryin' place, and from the Upper Saranac to Bound Lake, with them holes in my leg and arm, and the other bruises I received. When I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038095 | got out to the settlements I was mighty glad to lay still for six weeks, and when I got around again I was a good deal leaner than I am now. "My gun hangin' fire made my bullet go wide of the spot I aimed at. It had grazed his skull and stunned him for a little time, and crazed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038096 | him into the bargain. I learned more fully a fact that I'd an idea of before, by my fight with that deer, and it is this--that it's best to keep out of the way of a furious buck with tall, sharp horns on his head. He's a dangerous animal to handle. "That's one of the adventures that I went out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038097 | into the wilderness arter, and found without lookin' for it; and I've found a good many others that put me and Crop in a tight place more than once. I backed him over all the carryin' places between Little Tupper's and the Saranacs once, when he was too lame and weak to walk, and nussed him for a month afterwards. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038098 | But that's an adventer I'll tell another time. There's a deal of excitement, as the Judge calls it, outside of the fences, if people will take the pains to look for it there." . ROUND POND--THE PILE DRIVER--A THEORY FOR SPIRITUALISTS. We put up our tents the next evening, on a bold bluff near the outlet of Round Pond, a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038099 | picturesque and pleasant sheet of water, some eight or ten miles in circumference. It lay there still and waveless, in that calm summer evening, as glassy and smooth as if no breeze had ever stirred its surface. All around it were old forests, old hills and rocks, and away off in the distance were the tall peaks of the Adirondacks, | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.