Venerable trapper, our communications have a recent origin, or thy interrogatory might have a tendency to embroil us in angry disputation.
Am I man enough!
I claim to be of the class, mammalia; order, primates; genus, homo!
Such are my physical attributes; of my moral properties, let posterity speak; it becomes me to be mute.”
“Physic may do for such as relish it; to my taste and judgment it is neither palatable nor healthy; but morals never did harm to any living mortal, be it that he was a sojourner in the forest, or a dweller in the midst of glazed windows and smoking chimneys.
It is only a few hard words that divide us, friend; for I am of an opinion that, with use and freedom, we should come to understand one another, and mainly settle down into the same judgments of mankind, and of the ways of world.
Quiet, Hector, quiet; what ruffles your temper, pup; is it not used to the scent of human blood?”
The Doctor bestowed a gracious but commiserating smile on the philosopher of nature, as he retrograded a step or two from the place whither he had been impelled by his excess of spirit, in order to reply with less expenditure of breath, and with a greater freedom of air and attitude.
“A homo is certainly a homo,” he said, stretching forth an arm in an argumentative manner; “so far as the animal functions extend, there are the connecting links of harmony, order, conformity, and design, between the whole genus; but there the resemblance ends.
Man may be degraded to the very margin of the line which separates him from the brute, by ignorance; or he may be elevated to a communion with the great Master-spirit of all, by knowledge; nay, I know not, if time and opportunity were given him, but he might become the master of all learning, and consequently equal to the great moving principle.”
The old man, who stood leaning on his rifle in a thoughtful attitude, shook his head, as he answered with a native steadiness, that entirely eclipsed the imposing air which his antagonist had seen fit to assume—
“This is neither more nor less than mortal wickedness!
Here have I been a dweller on the earth for four-score and six changes of the seasons, and all that time have I look’d at the growing and the dying trees, and yet do I not know the reasons why the bud starts under the summer sun, or the leaf falls when it is pinch’d by the frosts.
Your l’arning, though it is man’s boast, is folly in the eyes of Him, who sits in the clouds, and looks down, in sorrow, at the pride and vanity of his creatur’s. Many is the hour that I’ve passed, lying in the shades of the woods, or stretch’d upon the hills of these open fields, looking up into the blue skies, where I could fancy the Great One had taken his stand, and was solemnising on the waywardness of man and brute, below, as I myself had often look’d at the ants tumbling over each other in their eagerness, though in a way and a fashion more suited to His mightiness and power. Knowledge! It is his plaything.
Say, you who think it so easy to climb into the judgment-seat above, can you tell me any thing of the beginning and the end?
Nay, you’re a dealer in ailings and cures: what is life, and what is death?
Why does the eagle live so long, and why is the time of the butterfly so short?
Tell me a simpler thing: why is this hound so uneasy, while you, who have passed your days in looking into books, can see no reason to be disturbed?”
The Doctor, who had been a little astounded by the dignity and energy of the old man, drew a long breath, like a sullen wrestler who is just released from the throttling grasp of his antagonist, and seized on the opportunity of the pause to reply—
“It is his instinct.”
“And what is the gift of instinct?”
“An inferior gradation of reason.
A sort of mysterious combination of thought and matter.”
“And what is that which you call thought?”
“Venerable venator, this is a method of reasoning which sets at nought the uses of definitions, and such as I do assure you is not at all tolerated in the schools.”
“Then is there more cunning in your schools than I had thought, for it is a certain method of showing them their vanity,” returned the trapper, suddenly abandoning a discussion, from which the naturalist was just beginning to anticipate great delight, by turning to his dog, whose restlessness he attempted to appease by playing with his ears. “This is foolish, Hector; more like an untrained pup than a sensible hound; one who has got his education by hard experience, and not by nosing over the trails of other dogs, as a boy in the settlements follows on the track of his masters, be it right or be it wrong. Well, friend; you who can do so much, are you equal to looking into the thicket? or must I go in myself?”
The Doctor again assumed his air of resolution, and, without further parlance, proceeded to do as desired.
The dogs were so far restrained, by the remonstrances of the old man, as to confine their noise to low but often-repeated whinings.
When they saw the naturalist advance, the pup, however, broke through all restraint, and made a swift circuit around his person, scenting the earth as he proceeded, and then, returning to his companion, he howled aloud.
“The squatter and his brood have left a strong scent on the earth,” said the old man, watching as he spoke for some signal from his learned pioneer to follow; “I hope yonder school-bred man knows enough to remember the errand on which I have sent him.”
Doctor Battius had already disappeared in the bushes and the trapper was beginning to betray additional evidences of impatience, when the person of the former was seen retiring from the thicket backwards, with his face fastened on the place he had just left, as if his look was bound in the thraldom of some charm.
“Here is something skeery, by the wildness of the creatur’s countenance!” exclaimed the old man relinquishing his hold of Hector, and moving stoutly to the side of the totally unconscious naturalist. “How is it, friend; have you found a new leaf in your book of wisdom?”
“It is a basilisk!” muttered the Doctor, whose altered visage betrayed the utter confusion which beset his faculties. “An animal of the order, serpens.
I had thought its attributes were fabulous, but mighty nature is equal to all that man can imagine!”
“What is’t? what is’t?
The snakes of the prairies are harmless, unless it be now and then an angered rattler and he always gives you notice with his tail, afore he works his mischief with his fangs.
Lord, Lord, what a humbling thing is fear!
Here is one who in common delivers words too big for a humble mouth to hold, so much beside himself, that his voice is as shrill as the whistle of the whip-poor-will!
Courage!—what is it, man?—what is it?”
“A prodigy! a lusus naturae! a monster, that nature has delighted to form, in order to exhibit her power!
Never before have I witnessed such an utter confusion in her laws, or a specimen that so completely bids defiance to the distinctions of class and genera.
Let me record its appearance,” fumbling for his tablets with hands that trembled too much to perform their office, “while time and opportunity are allowed—eyes, enthralling; colour, various, complex, and profound—”
“One would think the man was craz’d, with his enthralling looks and pieball’d colours!” interrupted the discontented trapper, who began to grow a little uneasy that his party was all this time neglecting to seek the protection of some cover. “If there is a reptile in the brush, show me the creatur’, and should it refuse to depart peaceably, why there must be a quarrel for the possession of the place.”
“There!” said the Doctor, pointing into a dense mass of the thicket, to a spot within fifty feet of that where they both stood.
The trapper turned his look, with perfect composure, in the required direction, but the instant his practised glance met the object which had so utterly upset the philosophy of the naturalist, he gave a start himself, threw his rifle rapidly forward, and as instantly recovered it, as if a second flash of thought convinced him he was wrong.
Neither the instinctive movement, nor the sudden recollection, was without a sufficient object.
At the very margin of the thicket, and in absolute contact with the earth, lay an animate ball, that might easily, by the singularity and fierceness of its aspect, have justified the disturbed condition of the naturalist’s mind.
It were difficult to describe the shape or colours of this extraordinary substance, except to say, in general terms, that it was nearly spherical, and exhibited all the hues of the rainbow, intermingled without reference to harmony, and without any very ostensible design.
The predominant hues were a black and a bright vermilion.
With these, however, the several tints of white, yellow, and crimson, were strangely and wildly blended.