The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the coloring of the
forests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seen
in this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn in
Europe. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of its
accustomed brightness of tints - the sugar-maple with its golden leaves,
and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with the
intense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and the
mountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the ground
below was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, and
the trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and near
its northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors,
stands on a cliff which rises more than a hundred feet almost
perpendicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the Water
Gap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of a
saw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight.
Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play.
The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg two small lurid
spots, about a quarter of an inch apart. "That," said he, "is the bite of
a copper-head snake."
We asked when this happened.
"It was last summer," answered he; "the child was playing on the side of
the road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. As
soon as he came, my wife called my attention to what she called a scratch
on his leg. I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and the
child was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, and
immediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flow
freely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb"
(such was his pronunciation) "on the hills, which some call lion-heart,
and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in milk which we made him
drink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came applied hartshorn;
but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was the
most effectual remedy. The leg was terribly swollen, and for ten days we
thought the little fellow in great danger, but after that he became better
and finally recovered."
"How do you know that it was a copper-head that bit him?"
"We sent to the place where he was at play, found the snake, and killed
it. A violent rain had fallen just before, and it had probably washed him
down from the mountain-side."
"The boy appears very healthy now."
"Much better than before; he was formerly delicate, and troubled with an
eruption, but that has disappeared, and he has become hardy and fond of
the open air."
We dined at the hotel and left the Water Gap. As we passed out of its jaws
we met a man in a little wagon, carrying behind him the carcass of a deer
he had just killed. They are hunted, at this time of the year, and killed
in considerable numbers in the extensive forests to the north of this
place. A drive of four miles over hill and valley brought us to
Stroudsburg, on the banks of the Pocano - a place of which I shall speak in
my next letter.
Letter XLII.
An Excursion to the Water Gap.
Easton, Penn., _October_ 24, 1846.
My yesterday's letter left me at Stroudsburg, about four miles west of the
Delaware. It is a pleasant village, situated on the banks of the Pocano.
From this stream the inhabitants have diverted a considerable portion of
the water, bringing the current through this village in a canal, making it
to dive under the road and rise again on the opposite side, after which it
hastens to turn a cluster of mills. To the north is seen the summit of the
Pocano mountain, where this stream has its springs, with woods stretching
down its sides and covering the adjacent country. Here, about nine miles
to the north of the village, deer haunt and are hunted. I heard of one man
who had already killed nine of these animals within two or three weeks. A
traveller from Wyoming county, whom I met at our inn, gave me some account
of the winter life of the deer.
"They inhabit," he said, "the swamps of mountain-laurel thickets, through
which a man would find it almost impossible to make his way. The
laurel-bushes, and the hemlocks scattered among them, intercept the snow
as it falls, and form a thick roof, under the shelter of which, near some
pool or rivulet, the animals remain until spring opens, as snugly
protected from the severity of the weather as sheep under the sheds of a
farm-yard. Here they feed upon the leaves of the laurel and other
evergreens. It is contrary to the law to kill them after the Christmas
holidays, but sometimes their retreat is invaded, and a deer or two
killed; their flesh, however, is not wholesome, on account of the laurel
leaves on which they feed, and their skin is nearly worthless."
I expressed my surprise that the leaves of the mountain laurel, the
_kalmia latifolia_, which are so deadly to sheep, should be the winter
food of the deer.
"It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, "that the pison
don't take effect. But their meat will not do to eat, except in a small
quantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out of
it."
"The deer," he went on to say, "are now passing out of the blue into the
gray.
