It seems to us that no traveller has
ever explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is
elsewhere revealing every day, who would not like to hear their annals?
Our humble villages in the plain are their contribution. We borrow from
the forest the boards which shelter, and the sticks which warm us. How
important is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer
which does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass. Thus
simply, and with little expense of altitude, is the surface of the earth
diversified. What would human life be without forests, those natural
cities? From the tops of mountains they appear like smooth shaven lawns,
yet whither shall we walk but in this taller grass?
In this glade covered with bushes of a year's growth, see how the silvery
dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such infinite and
luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the absence of color.
Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem, and the triangular
tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs over all, as if the
impurities of the summer sky, refined and shrunk by the chaste winter's
cold, had been winnowed from the heavens upon the earth.
Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem
to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water
turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The
winter is an arctic summer.
How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life which
still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and woods
covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise.
"The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants.".
The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote glens,
even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and Labrador,
and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians, Novazemblaites,
and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and wood-chopper, the
fox, musk-rat, and mink?
Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to its
retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched over the
brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may observe the
submarine cottages of the caddice-worms, the larvae of the Plicipennes.
Their small cylindrical cases built around themselves, composed of flags,
sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and pebbles, in form and color
like the wrecks which strew the bottom,--now drifting along over the
pebbly bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls,
or sweeping rapidly along with the current, or else swaying to and fro at
the end of some grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken
habitations, and, crawling up the stems of plants, or to the surface, like
gnats, as perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the
water, or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candles at
evening. Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under their
burden, and the red alder-berries contrast with the white ground. Here are
the marks of a myriad feet which have already been abroad. The sun rises
as proudly over such a glen, as over the valley of the Seine or the Tiber,
and it seems the residence of a pure and self-subsistent valor, such as
they never witnessed; which never knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the
simplicity and purity of a primitive age, and a health and hope far remote
from towns and cities.
