Lost on a Bee Hunt in Bedford County
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Early the next morning, according to our plan, we lightheartedly set out to hunt for bee trees, provided with a tinder box, flint and steel, and various other necessary articles, the weight and bulk of which prevented us from carrying guns. Nothing could have been more exact than the information which Mr. --- gave us before we left; with it we should even have been able to cross the Alleghenies safely. In less than half an hour we found ourselves on the edge of a wide and deep ravine, which appeared to serve as a drainage for the torrents occasioned by the melting of the snows. In all our travels we had never seen such a striking scene; it was the picture of destruction and havoc. On one side there were pools of stagnant water filled with reptiles and with the heads of isolated rocks against which the flood waters had broken with great violence. On the other side there were accumulations of mud, sand, and gravel; some heaps of interwoven trees, built up like dikes, which, judging by the great masses of leaves and dry dirt, appeared to have resisted the violence of the waters; and finally, some stumps and branches so piled against the banks that one could not approach them. Knowing how difficult it would be for such novices as ourselves to cross over these obstacles, we were astonished that Mr.--- had not told us about them. We decided to follow the banks of the gully until we should find a place not so deep and easier to cross. Such a place we found after traveling two or three miles farther. But too preoccupied and distracted, we went straight on after our crossing and failed to ascend the ravine as far as our next marker. Fatal carelessness! We had gone into the woods I know not how far when Monsieur Herman, stopping suddenly, cried out, "Our trees! Where are they? We have lost our way! We are ruined!" Like a light that reveals to the traveler's eye the precipice to whose edge darkness has led him, these words, suddenly opening my eyes, caused me to perceive the danger into which our carelessness had led us. "Let us go back the way we came," I told him. "Since we have been keeping the moss on the trees to our left, we have been going west; if we keep it to our right, we will find ourselves again at the ravine, whose course should be north and south." But not having, like the Indians, the ability to trace our steps by the displacement of the leaves, besides being anxious and uneasy, we were deceived in our hopes. Night surprised us before we could find anything that would set our fears at rest. In the woods, as on the sea and elsewhere, one error leads to another; the greater the distance that one travels in trying to find a lost road, the farther one gets from it. That is what happened to us. Although seven months have gone by since that unhappy adventure, I still recall those frightful images that appeared when day left us in the woods. Time, with its file and its sponge, will never efface from my mind the painful memory of the moment when I saw the face of death behind the horrors of despair and hunger. Night having come, I was occupied in the search for dry wood to light a fire, when Monsieur Herman, who was a little distance away, cried out, "What are we going to do? What will become of us?" "What's the matter? What has happened?" I asked him. "I have lost the flint and steel, probably in the fall I took crossing the ravine. Would it be possible to find them in these woods?" "That isn't very likely," I answered him; "Moreover, one could scarcely see now to make the search." It is indeed true, as I have often heard it said, that misfortune never comes alone! "Give me the tinder box," I told him, "I am going to try to light it with the first stones that we find." But our attempts were fruitless. "What!" my companion exclaimed to me sadly; "must we be exposed to the fury of wolves and panthers for the lack of a single piece of flint when there are so many pieces of it lying useless on the earth! Of all the possible combinations of misfortune, this one appears to me to be the most fatal. Of what, I wonder, does good fortune in life consist? Elsewhere the kind of rock we so much need is used lavishly in the building of roads; here one alone would console us, would bring back confidence and courage, by producing fire and light." "Let us not give ourselves up to despair," I told him, "because of one night passed without fire at the foot of a tree. We are lost if we do so. Give me your shoes. I am going to place them, and mine, some distance away from us. Be sure that, with the help of this feeble ruse, we shall pass the night tranquilly, and tomorrow we shall get out of this maze." Weakened as we were by hunger and fatigue and bowed down under the weight of mournful and gloomy reflections and presentments, how the hours of that night seemed to drag out! Our eyes soon accustomed themselves to the darkness. The more or less faraway cries of the wolves, the shrill voice of the nighthawks and the owls, repeated over and over by the nocturnal echoes of the forest, the noise, the slightest suspicion of movement, the sighs even of the breezes, gave birth to a thousand conjectures in the agitated mind of my companion. His imagination, exercising all its power in the creation of the most sinister forebodings, drove away sleep from his tired eyes. Whence comes this effect of darkness on the spirits of most men? After having for a long time occupied myself with recalling what little I knew of the geography of that part of the mountains, the course of the ravine, and the direction of the route we had taken since crossing it, I resolved that at daybreak I would climb to the top of a tall tree and watch the sun come up. I was telling Monsieur Herman of my intention, when, in an angry tone, he said to me, "You led me into this awful predicament, telling me about bee hunting." "Well," I replied, "and am I not here also? Is bitter feeling now going to replace friendship and confidence? That's the way men are: circumstances alone decide their feelings for each other." That eternal night finally rolled away, and as soon as day appeared I carried out my plan. Then, marking the point on the horizon where I had seen the sun rise, and persuaded that our route should be to the northeast, we set out in that direction. We should truly have found our way back to the ravine if we had not been forced to cross several valleys filled with high bushes, in the middle of which we again lost ourselves. How is one to guide himself through these forests, when each new object so closely resembles one that has just been left behind? What is one to use for the signs so necessary in traveling through these lonely and unknown woods? Is one to depend upon study or upon inspiration? How do the Indians manage so well? I spoke to my companion of what I knew concerning the inconceivable sagacity of the animals, who never get lost in the woods. "That is what causes me to blush with shame," he said, "when I think that two cows with their instinct are better equipped to get out of the predicament we are in than two men, with their reason and their judgment." We kept on walking, or, rather, we wandered about all day, without perceiving the slightest sign that would suggest the presence of some nearby plantation or the ravine for which we sought; nor could we find a single fruit, a single berry with which to appease the hunger that was gnawing at our intestines. How many times in the course of that long day did we give ear to the slightest sound without hearing anything but the lugubrious accents of the forest birds and vague, indistinct murmurs which, in a more happy time, would have sounded to us like the voice of Nature! How many times did we call out without hearing any response except those faraway echoes which made us shiver more than once because we believed them to be the answering voice of a man! Why does time, which ordinarily passes like the shadow of the sun, without its progress being noticeable, permit our moments of happiness to roll away so fast and prolong, on the contrary, our moments of unhappiness, as if to make us feel more vividly all the bitterness? Tormented by hunger, irritation, and despair, we ended the second and the cruellest night that I have ever known. And filled with sad forebodings we began the third day of that ill-fated excursion into the woods. We no longer spoke. Absorbed, plunged into the depths of consternation and weakness, we were walking slowly towards what we believed to be the northwest, when Monsier Herman suddenly cried out, "We are not far from a settlement! We are saved! Here are some holes recently dug which can only be the work of hogs." "Alas! Would to Heaven it were so," I said. "This is only the work of one of the flocks of wild turkeys that fill these woods. Still, if we had our guns, one of these beautiful birds could sustain us for a long time, since nature has not placed here a single sort of fruit with which man can nourish himself. Never have forests been so sterile." As if dark despair and the burning and excruciating pains of hunger were not enough to fill to the brim our cup of woe, towards the middle of this day a mad rage took possession of us. If we opened our mouths, it was only to overwhelm each other with abuses and biting reproaches concerning the trip. If by chance our eyes met, although dim and weak, they were still able to become enflamed with anger and hatred. These passions, which, until that time, we had never known, manifested themselves without warning and with great violence, as if some wicked genius had suddenly breathed them into our hearts. But no, the germs that nature had hidden there were undoubtedly waiting to develop themselves during just such sad circumstances as those to which we had been reduced. Ah! if, in these terrible moments of madness we had been carrying guns or had possessed the strength to seize each other, frantic as we were, one of us would have killed the other. These tempests, which I recall now only with shame and fright, changed toward evening into the calm of extreme weakness and depression. We sat down underneath a tree, and immediately we were seized with a burning of the bowels which, at each instant, made us desire something to drink. Thus, to the torments, to the perpetual irritations of extreme hunger, was joined the devouring fever of thirst, the most insupportable of the needs to which man can be subjected. Happily, the changing of the wind having brought us the noise of a nearby waterfall, we followed the sound, and leaning from time to time against the trees for support, we finally found ourselves at nightfall on the border of a river, which I have since learned was one of the branches of the Aliquippa. There we quenched our burning thirst. Monsieur Herman spent almost all that third night in the most frightful delirium. He cursed the day he was born, his trip across the ocean, and, above all, his companion, whose last agonies he hoped would come before his own so he might have the pleasure of watching them. But although this transport of fever and despair appeared to have given him new strength, I feared that he could not survive another paroxysm like that we had experienced at sunset. The great quantity of water that I had drunk produced a contrary effect upon me. It calmed the fever and the acute pains, but it deluged my face and body with a cold sweat; my faculties were duller, more enfeebled, than those of my unfortunate companion. Perhaps, though I was as unhappy, I suffered less. My eyes closed, and the last impression which today I can recall is that of the state of resignation into which I had fallen and the consciousness of the rapid decline of life. I regretted, however, that I was dying alone, abandoned at the foot of a tree. The idea of being devoured after death by carnivorous animals aroused in me the most profound horror. Nevertheless, nature still had an eye to our preservation; the cessation of thought was with us the beginning of drowsiness. We seem to have slept for some hours, and, in spite of all our sinister forebodings, we saw the light of the fourth day. But, like a funeral torch, it served only to augment the horror of our predicament by permitting us to see the doors of the tomb which we were approaching. Our eyes, covered with the film of death, in place of real objects saw only fantastic images, like us, agitated and trembling. Sometimes the shadows that surrounded us would suddenly be dispersed by shafts of flickering, short-lived light. Sometimes they offered us phantoms which, after fluttering towards us, skimming over the surface of the ground and grazing the tops of bushes, came finally to rest in the trees above. Often our eyes, almost out, saw everything through a translucent haze, unable any longer to distinguish anything. Such were the images produced by two imaginations nearly hidden in the shadows of death. "It is sometimes when the cup of misfortune is full," I could yet say to my companion, while leading the way to the bank of the river, "that suddenly consolation, a gleam of hope, arrives. Have you never observed at sea those comforting intermissions during the most frightful storms? Here we are, arrived at the last possible stage of misfortune, still hoping!" "How do you pronounce that word?" he asked me with the tone and gesture of wrath. "Despair and death have dissipated my last, lingering illusions. Since you are so inclined, keep on hoping. As for me, I am going to throw myself into that river, at the bottom of which peace and quiet sleep await me. Who would want to endure longer these biting pains, when from the middle of hell to a place of rest there is a distance of only twenty feet?" "Let us try one more day," I said to him, "if that is possible. Let us drink more water, and if there comes to us no favorable sign, this evening we will drown ourselves together." "Why should anyone suffer as I do?" he replied. "This evening is a hundred leagues away.... Well! since you have become my enemy by trying to persuade me to live a few more hours, kill your dog and give me my share that I may eat my fill. If you are so inhuman as to refuse me this, be generous enough to let me die on the instant." Far from heeding my affections and pity at the sight of the dog, as weak and languishing as ourselves, I was seized by a feeling far more violent than anger, a feeling of madness. I shivered. My trembling hands eagerly sought the knife that they had dropped among the leaves, while my companion, given new life by the hope of gratifying his hunger, accused me of slowness and overwhelmed me with new reproaches. As I reached for my submissive victim, an impulse from that invisible power who presides over our destinies guided my eyes to the stalk of a groundnut plant. "We are saved!" I cried. "We are saved! The soil on which we spent the night, and where we expected to die, conceals that which will give us life again, for wherever there is one of these plants there will be a thousand of them. And all the time we were in ignorance!" "Merciful God! Blessed God!" he cried out in his turn. "Are you not deceiving me?" Immediately I offered him the first of the roots which I had just pulled up. But we were both so weak that it cost us much sweat and labor before we could obtain enough for our needs. Ah! if we had only possessed the means of lighting a fire, what a wonderful meal we could have had! But how can I describe the effect that was produced on our spirits by the certainty of being able to provide enough food? How is it possible to depict this exquisite, new feeling, this unutterable rapture, which suddenly restored our depleted vigor, got hold of our withered spirits, and recalled the delicious and divine consolation of hope? And how can I render in words those feelings which, though hard to describe, I felt nevertheless so vividly: that sudden transition from extreme need to the possession of nourishment gathered by the light of a feeble ray of hope; the change from a desperate condition to a state of tranquillity; the passage finally from the banks of the gloomy Cocytus to the land of the living? The passions which nearly caused the death of my poor dog were doubtless the same as those which, engendered by days of unsuccessful hunting, brought about the beginning of cannibalism; for the distance is not so great as one might think, between killing one's dog and killing one's friend. Like us, after having so long fought against hunger and irritated to the point of madness, lacking a dog, the strongest will kill the weakest. What a sad and deplorable result of an organization submitted to the rule of necessity! But then, that same necessity has never been able to cause the most ferocious and the most carnivorous of animals to fight their own kind in order to eat their carcasses. The second stage of cannibalism must have come as the aftermath to war, with the starving conquerors eating the vanquished people, a situation that still exists among the nations in the interior of North America, among the tribes of Brazil, and everywhere that Captain Cook landed. Cannibalism ceased, however, when man learned to tame and raise animals. But how many centuries must have come before that happy discovery was made! Without this benefit of nature, where would we be today? And I, myself! Have I not approached cannibalism? Yes, without doubt, when I started to feed myself on the flesh of a being I loved, when I almost killed a companion who during so many years had been my faithful servant, even saving my life in a river, a friend whose experience, sagacity, and affection have so often struck me with respect and admiration. Ah! poor Ontario! What a happiness for you, and even more so for me, that you can never know that I reached the point of lifting my fratricidal hand against you! But even if you did know it, you would either not be able to believe it or you would forgive me. However, having become more calm after satisfying our pressing needs and after enjoying some hours of a beneficent sleep, we again occupied ourselves with the search for groundnuts, of which we wanted to make an abundant provision, when I thought I heard the faint tinkle of one of those bells that the colonists fasten to the neck of the strongest animal in their herds. My ears . . . what am I saying! . . . my whole soul was recalled from its torpor by the mere thought of that consoling sound; I placed myself to leeward of the tree by whose trunk I had been standing when I thought I heard the bell. How long and cruel were those minutes that slipped by, tormenting me with doubt, with anxiety, and with the fear of being deceived! I was going to tell my companion, when that sound so much longed for came again, and so distinctly that my eyes suddenly filled with tears, my heart swelled and palpitated; I could scarcely say to him, "Yes! It is the ringing of a bell. I am sure of it. We shall not perish in these somber, uncultivated solitudes. The Alleghenies will not be our tomb. ... Listen to that comforting and delightful sound! May the breeze that carried it to us be a thousand times blessed! . . . Yes! It is Heaven who sends hope to our aid; it is she who calls us... Get up... Obey her!" But still much affected, trembling, our eyes fixed, our ears turned to the wind, it was only after having several times heard the bell that, reviving little by little, recalled slowly to life, we were able to find strength to move toward it. The sound became more and more distinct as we advanced, until about five o'clock we at last came upon the saving herd of animals grazing in a bog meadow. "Let us give thanks," I said to Monsieur Herman, "for this unexpected favor, for our restoration to life, to society, and to our friends, not only by our feelings but also by expressing aloud our most heartfelt gratitude." And on the instant we fell to our knees underneath a tree, in order to address to Heaven the words that our agitated hearts inspired in us but which our feeble lips could scarcely pronounce. The herd of animals, to whose wisdom and instinct we owe our return to a settlement, was composed of forty-two head, among which we counted eight cows. "I see those eight good ladies," my companion said to me," but how can we get milk from them?" "With patience and gentleness," I answered. In fact, after several attempts, we were able to milk three of them into our hats. How exquisite this nectar sent from heaven seemed to us! It was the restoring balm of life, and I did not fail to give some of it to that humble and faithful servant which I had almost sacrificed during my delirium of hunger. While we were waiting with impatience for the homeward trip of the herd, Monsieur Herman, recalling all that he had said to me in the access of despair and rage, begged me to forget it. "Those reproaches," I said to him, "those abuses, were the result of the deplorable condition to which we were reduced. Alas! That was only the least of our misfortunes. We have surmounted them all, however. Let us talk of the time when we shall get out of these woods and see again the light of the sun, the cultivated fields, the people who will become our friends because of our misfortunes; for how could man hate his own kind unless his passion or his interest dictated it? Let us free our hearts-blighted so long-to the sentiments of joy and tenderness, to the sweet emotions of friendship and kindness. Let the sad and painful thoughts be forever effaced from our memory and consigned to the deepest well of forgetfulness." The bell-carrying ox finally stopped grazing and set out, as well as I could judge, in the direction of the northeast. We were slowly following the herd of guides, when Monsieur Herman, who could walk only with pain, said to me, "The night is coming on, as you see. I am not yet reassured. I am afraid that these animals are lost and will not be able to find their home." "Do not worry," I said; "put your trust in the infallibility of the instinct that guides them. That unalterable light seems to be much more trustworthy in everything that is useful to them than is our pompous reason. I know some examples of sagacity and foresight among the animals raised in the forest that would bring honor to any man, no matter how proud he might be of his intelligence. How different are they from animals kept constantly within enclosed fields." And finally, our eager, restless eyes, continually peering in the direction toward which the herd was moving, beheld a clearing. They suddenly filled with tears. We were seized by a sensation so extraordinary, a suffocation so violent, that, almost succumbing, we sat down at the foot of a tree." The sweat streamed down our faces; our hearts beat violently as in the -first moments of fright. We were both in a condition of weakness so extreme that we could foresee neither its length nor its end. But our ecstasy finally becoming calmer, we rejoined the herd of animals. "O memorable day!" I said to myself, "the day of my second birth! It shall never be erased from my memory! If ever misfortune, unhappiness, or sorrow assails me, I shall allay its pangs by thinking of the awful misery that is now about to end." If the sudden passage from the darkness of the woods to the light of a clearing is always a striking contrast for those who have been long in the forest, how much more of a contrast was it for us who were emerging from the shadows of the tomb! But the horizon expanded little by little; already we could distinguish a field, some apple trees, some cherry trees. "I see these very interesting objects," said Monsieur Herman, "but where is the house?" "A little patience," I replied. "The home of the family which has cleared this land is not far away." And in a few minutes we caught sight of a column of smoke rising perpendicularly, for the wind had fallen with the sun. He who, swept away by the strength of the current, is saved at the instant when the waves are about to engulf him, or the sailor who, uncertain of his latitude, in the middle of a fog discovers his landfall, does not experience a greater, more profound joy than we did at the sight of that smoke, which was to us the lighthouse of salvation. At last we reached the house. And none too soon! The state of weakness and trembling to which we had arrived would not have permitted us to go another two miles. "You will have much less milk today than you had yesterday," I announced to the lady of the house, who at the sound of the bell had come forth accompanied by her two daughters. "Dying of hunger for four days, we had the good fortune to find your cows, three of whom we milked. Then, with our strength renewed, we were able to follow them here in order to beg your hospitality." "Sirs, even my enemies would have the right to my hospitality if they had gone through what you seem to have experienced," she replied. "Give me your arm, and come into the house." Never were words pronounced more clearly, nor listened to with more attention and gratitude. The first service that generous woman rendered us was to perfume with maple sugar the beds which were destined for us; the second, to bring us a bowl of broth made from allagriches,1 from which she permitted us to eat only a little at a time. When we reproached her with some bitterness for the small portions, the sweetness of her voice, which was that of humanity and reason, repressed our desires and silenced our tongues. What nutritive power is contained in that dish! I have often wondered since why it is not better known. However, I have heard of several doctors who prescribed its use for convalescents. The good woman assigned one of her daughters to remain with us until her strength-restoring diet guided us insensibly to sleep. . . What did I say? . . . to the most profound repose, the most balsamic rest that ever nature in the plenitude of its kindness saw fit to accord the shipwrecked mariner. The sun had climbed to its meridian on the following day before our eyes again opened. By that time the master of the plantation had returned from a trip to the village of Bedford, where he had gone on business. He brought us a beautiful salmon trout and permitted us to eat our fill, giving us also several glasses of currant wine that had aged five years in his cellar, a wine that is found more commonly among the good colonists of Pennsylvania than among those of other states. What an event that meal was for us! What a contrast between the sweet and ravishing thoughts that now revived our spirits and those which on the previous day had caused us so much torture! We now enjoyed the most delicious calm and immobility. After thanking the master of the house with all the effusion of our hearts for his wife's kindness, we told him our long, sad story. "It is not unusual," he explained, "for people who do not know the direction the streams take, or the way the mountains run, or the method of retracing their path by the displacement of the leaves, to get lost in this territory and almost die of hunger. You are not the first who have had this unhappy experience. I am thankful that it is my herd of cows to which we are indebted, you for your salvation and I for the pleasure of having you under my roof. I shall guide you back to my neighbor's house when you are entirely recovered; he lives only seven miles from here. And in the meantime, be assured that we will take care of you as if you were our relatives or our friends." "May Providence permit us," Monsieur Herman told him, "to show you some day that you did not give refuge to a pair of ingrates. Could you be even kinder and send one of your people to our friend's house? He is no doubt much disturbed on our account and perhaps even considers us dead." "Write him a letter," our host answered, "and I shall see that he gets it right away." In fact, the very next day this good old soldier arrived early to see us; he was still quite overcome with pleasure and astonishment, and could not understand how we had wandered as far as the banks of the Aliquippa. He and his people had looked for us, he said, through the forest, both on the right and the left of the way we should have taken. They had been as far as the foothills and had finally abandoned the search on the third day. How pleasant it is to recall so many kindnesses, rendered with so much promptness and good will! No, never shall I forget what I owe to the saintly hospitality of the Forbes family, who live in Bedford County in the Allegheny Mountains. Finally, after four days of rest, we were permitted to take mild exercise and go for walks; then, accompanied by our host, we set out for his plantation. ------------------------ 1 Of all the dishes made from Indian corn the one known by this name is the most nourishing and the most useful to travelers. When the ears are just ripe, the Indians dry them and give them a light washing to take off the husks. After removing the grains they grind them in a mortar and add to them an equal quantity of maple sugar. This is the panacea which they use when they find nothing on searching the forests. Prepared as a broth nothing is more pleasant to the taste, nor more refreshing. When crushed these grains look much like rice. It was under this name that Penn's earliest companions sent some of them back to England. [Crevecoeur's note, II, 391-92.]
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