Colonial Horrors

by Graeme Davis

  Dismounting, we fastened our horses to a couple of saplings, and I was introduced to the interior of Cranberry Lodge, which was tenanted only by the “hired man,” who, in the absence of Mr. B., reigned supreme in the clearing. The dwelling I found no less primitive in internal than in its external appearance. Three persons, moderately doubled up and squeezed, could find room in the interior, which was furnished with a bench for the safe-keeping of sundry pots, pans, and other culinary necessaries, and with a shelf on which some blankets were laid, constituting my companion’s bedstead and bed, when he slept in Cranberry Lodge. Beneath the “bunk” a small hole scooped in the sand stood in lieu of a cellar, and contained a stock of provisions of Mr. B.’s own cooking.

  Such a backwoodish dwelling as Cranberry Lodge, existing in the year 1858, within seventy miles of New York, requires some explanation. Its foundation is—pies! Cape Cod, the great emporium of the cranberry-trade, has been running short for the last few years; in other words, its supply is unequal to the demand. The heavy Britishers have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way; and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now. It so happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,—grew red and purple and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well as when Washington passed through the Pines,—and for sixty or seventy years have furnished a certain class of gypsies—of whom more anon—with merchandise which sold well in the neighboring villages and cities. No one thought of cultivating cranberries; no one, but the gypsies aforesaid, of gathering them for sale. But it came to pass that a certain farmer of Hanover was, like many another, unsuccessful during several years. As a last resource, he purchased of the owner of the Big House a cranberry-bog,—that is to say, one of the many marshy spots which are interspersed in the forest,—for which he paid five dollars the acre. There were a little more than one hundred acres in the bog. At a cost of some six hundred dollars Mr. F. fenced in his bog, and spent three months in watching the cranberries as they ripened, to protect them from depredation. To his intense astonishment, he found, in October, that the yield was between two and three hundred bushels to the acre, and that his land and fencing were paid for, with a balance left over for next year. In consequence of this success, a little mania for cranberry-farming seized upon the denizens of the Pines, and bogs acquired a value they had never borne before. This was in 1857. Early in 1858, one of these plots of land, with an adjoining piece of forest, was rented by Mr. B., who, like a right-down Yankee, determined to cultivate it himself. So, with the aid of one hired man, a clearing was made in his forest-patch, a hut built, four miles from the nearest habitation, and the trees cut down were converted into rails, wherewith to fence in the cranberry-land. At the time of my visit, the crop was just beginning to think of getting ripe, and the great lazy vines, each one creeping for several feet along the ground, were severally loaded with dozens of delicately-tinted berries, plump and fair as British beauties, which silently drew to themselves and absorbed the rays of the sun, turning them to color and succulent subacidulousness. A most glorious sight that same hundred-acre bog must have been a couple of weeks later, when the berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to the waning sun! Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for cranberries,—the yield was only sufficient to pay for the land and fencing, with a modicum over to begin 1859 with!

  So cranberries grew to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—the Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not yet had its Agassiz nor its Wyman,—yet there it flourishes and repeats itself!

  My friend, Mr. B., considerately undertook to initiate me into some of the mysteries of this race, which has proved minatory, though not destructive, to his blushing crop,—and accordingly led me through brake and brier, past wild and gloomy cedar-swamps, over brooks insecurely bridged with fallen logs, or, perchance, with stepping-blocks of pine-stumps, far into the silent forest, and to a little dell or dingle,—a natural clearing,—where a couple of tents were pitched, and the smoke of a struggling fire told infallibly of human neighborhood. The barking of a splenetic little terrier brought from one of the tents a man of some fifty years, lank and gaunt of visage, with matted hair, and wild, uncivilized eyes, dressed in a ragged jacket and what had once been a pair of trousers. His face wore no expression of intelligence; but a look of intense, though animal cunning lurked in his eyes. While I was gazing on this individual, who stood in silence by his tent, there emerged from the other an ancient female, who might have been eighty years of age, but who hobbled towards us with much briskness.

  “Good evening, Hannah Butler,” said Mr. B.; “I’ve brought you some tomatoes from the Big House. This is my friend, Mr. Smith of York.”

  Mr. Smith of York (grimly repressing a smile, as his mischievous memory whispered something about Brooks of Sheffield) bowed gravely to Mrs. Butler. Mr. B. whispers,—“That’s the Queen of the Pine Rats!” Hannah meanwhile mumbles over one of the fleshy tomatoes.

  The man whom we had first seen held in his hand a tattered shawl, with which he now began patching a portion of his tent, saying at the same time that there was a storm a-brewing.

  “Ay, is there!” said Mrs. Butler; “and a storm like the one when I seed Leeds’s devil”—

  “Hush!” interrupted her ragged companion, with a look of terror. “What’s the good o’ namin’ him, and allus talkin’ about him, when yer don’t never know as he ar’n’t byside ye?”

  “I’ll devil yer!” shrieked the crone, through a half-eaten tomato. “Finish mendin’ up yer cover, yer mean cranberry-thief!”

  The spiteful terrier, which had meanwhile evinced an unpleasant interest in the thickness of my pantaloons, added his yelping to the clamor, and Mr. B., pointing to the clouds, thought we had better hasten homewards. So we bade farewell to Hannah and her nephew, as I learned that the unfortunate vessel of her wrath in reality was, and dived into the gloomy recesses of the Pines again.

  Long ere we got back to Cranberry Lodge, all doubts of an impending tempest had disappeared. The eastern sky, cloudless an hour before, was now overhung with a livid bank of ash-gray clouds, which were incessantly riven by broad and terrible flashes of silent lightning. A slight westerly breeze was blowing, and evidently impeded the progress of the storm, which was beating up from seaward against the wind. Plunging through prickly thickets and dashing through the turbid brooks, we hastened toward the clearing, committed Cranberry Lodge to the custody of the “hired man,” and untied our horses from the saplings to which they were made fast. In another moment we were on the back trail. Scarcely, however, was the clearing shut out of view when a little hesitating puff of wind from the east blew chill upon us; the breeze had veered, and the tempest was at hand. In the twinkling of an eye, the western horizon was overhung with the same ghastly storm-bank that threatened in the east, while a monitory gust rustled through the sighing pines, wildly twisting and tossing the undergrowth,—overspread with a quivering pallor as it bent before the breeze,—and bade us be prepared. Next moment, a clap of thunder, rattling like the artillery of ten thousand sieges, or like millions of bars of iron dashed furiously together, broke upon the forest. It was the most awful sound, terrible even in its expected suddenness, that I ever heard. Simultaneously a flash of purple lightning fell from the zenith to the horizon, splitting the clouds asunder, and with it there descended rain in a cataract rather than in torrents, so that in the twinkling of an eye the thirsty sand was saturated, and bubbling pools of water pattered in the deluged path. Crash after c
rash, each clap more terrific than the one preceding, came the awful thunder; blinding flashes of lightning darted around us;—but still our phlegmatic ponies galloped on, and only once started violently, when a peal which really seemed as if its shock must burst the heavens asunder dazed us momentarily with its almost unendurable sound. The gloomy canopy above us, meanwhile, was overrun by incessant streams of purple lightning, and the deluge of rain still fell. At length we reached the Big House, (somewhat ostentatiously reducing the speed of our horses to a walk as we came within sight of its embowered windows,) and were soon dripping in the kitchen. A change of apparel, calling into requisition Mexican ponchos and other picturesque garments, with a smoke beside a roaring fire, completely obviated all dangerous consequences; nor was it without feelings of great satisfaction that B. and myself watched tranquilly from our comfortable ensconcement the beatings of the storm on the encircling forest.

  The Big House, I found, was full of legends of the Pine Rats. This extraordinary race of beings are lineal descendants of the New Jersey Tories, who, during the Revolution, made the Pines their refuge, whence they sallied in perpetual forays against the farms and dwellings of the partisans of the opposite cause. Several hundreds of these fanatical desperadoes made the forest their home, and laid waste the surrounding townships by their sudden raids. Most barbarous cruelties were practised on both sides, in the contests which continually took place between Whigs and Tories, and the unnatural seven-years’ war possessed nowhere darker features than in the neighborhood of the New Jersey Pines. Remains of these forest-freebooters are still discovered from time to time, in the process of clearing the woods, and unmistakable relics are occasionally met with in the denser portions of the forest, which must have been comparatively open eighty years ago.

  The degraded descendants of these Tories constitute the principal difficulty with which a proprietor in this region has to contend. Completely besotted and brutish in their ignorance, they are incapable of obtaining an honest living, and have supported themselves, from a time which may be called immemorial, by practising petty larceny on an organized plan. The Pine Rat steals wood, steals game, steals cranberries, steals anything, in fact, that his hand can be laid upon; and woe to the property of the man who dares attempt to restrain him! A few weeks may, perhaps, elapse, after the tattered savage has received a warning or a reprimand, and then a column of smoke will be seen stealing up from some quarter in the forest;—he has set the woods on fire! Conflagrations of this kind will sometimes sweep away many hundreds of acres of the most valuable timber; while accidental fires are also of frequent occurrence. When indications of a fire are noticed, every available hand—men, women, and children alike—is hurried to the spot for the purpose of “fighting” it. Getting to leeward of the flames, the “fighters” kindle a counter-conflagration, which is drawn or sucked against the wind to the part already burning, and in this manner a vacant space is secured, which proves a barrier to the flames. Dexterity in fighting fires is a prime requisite in a forest overseer or workman.

  “And now, something about Leeds’s devil!” I said to my friend, after satisfactory definition of the Pine Rat; “what fiend may he be, if you please?”

  “I will answer,—I will tell you,” replies Mr. B. “There lived, in the year 1735, in the township of Burlington, a woman. Her name was Leeds, and she was shrewdly suspected of a little amateur witchcraft. Be that as it may, it is well established, that, one stormy, gusty night, when the wind was howling in turret and tree, Mother Leeds gave birth to a son, whose father could have been no other than the Prince of Darkness. No sooner did he see the light than he assumed the form of a fiend, with a horse’s head, wings of bat, and a serpent’s tail. The first thought of the newborn Caliban was to fall foul of his mother, whom he scratched and bepommelled soundly, and then flew through the window out into the village, where he played the mischief generally. Little children he devoured, maidens he abused, young men he mauled and battered; and it was many days before a holy man succeeded in repeating the enchantment of Prospero. At length, however, Leeds’s devil was laid,—but only for one hundred years.

  “During an entire century, the memory of that awful monster was preserved, and, as 1835 drew nigh, the denizens of Burlington and the Pines looked tremblingly for his rising. Strange to say, however, no one but Hannah Butler has had a personal interview with the fiend; though, since 1835, he has frequently been heard howling and screaming in the forest at night, to the terror of the Rats in their lonely encampments. Hannah Butler saw the devil, one stormy night, long ago; though some skeptical individuals affirm, that very possibly she may have been led, under the influence of liquid Jersey lightning, to invest a pine-stump, or, possibly, a belated bear, with diabolical attributes and a Satanic voice. However that may be, you cannot induce a Rat to leave his hut after dark,—nor, indeed, will you find many Jerseymen, though of a higher order of intelligence, who will brave the supernatural terrors of the gloomy forest at night, unless secure in the strength of numbers.”

  The Pine Rat, in his vocation as a picker-up of every unconsidered trifle, is an adept at charcoal-burning, on the sly. The business of legitimate charcoal-manufacture is also largely practised in the Pines, although the growing value of wood interferes sadly with the coalers. Here and there, however, a few acres are marked out every year for charring, and the coal-pits are established in the clearing made by felling the trees. The “coaling,” as it is technically termed, is an assemblage of “pits,” or piles of wood, conical in form, and about ten feet in height by twenty in diameter. The wood is cut in equal lengths, and is piled three or four tiers high, each log resting on the end of that below it, and inclining slightly inwards. An opening is left in the centre of the pile, serving as a chimney; and the exterior is overlaid with strips of turf, called “floats,” which form an almost air-tight covering. When the pile is overlaid, fire is set at various small apertures in the sides, and when the whole “pit” is fairly burning, the chimney is closed, in order to prevent too rapid combustion, and the whole pile is slowly converted into charcoal. The application of the term “pit” to these piles is worthy of remark. It is due, of course, to the fact, that for centuries it was customary to burn charcoal in excavated pits, until it was discovered that gradual combustion could be as well secured by another and less tedious method.

  The Pine Rat glories in his surreptitious coal-pits. In secluded portions of the forest, he may continually be discovered pottering over a “coaling,” for which he has stolen the wood. This, indeed, is his only handicraft,—the single labor to which he condescends or is equal. Two or three men sometimes band together and build themselves huts after the curious fashion peculiar to the Rat, namely, by piling sticks or branches in a slope on each side of some tall pine, so that a wigwam, with the trunk of the tree in the centre, is constructed. Inside this triangular shelter—the idea of which was probably borrowed from the Indians—the Pine Rat ensconces himself with his whiskey-bottle at night, crouching in dread of the darkness, or of Leeds’s devil, aforesaid. In this respect he singularly resembles the Bohemian charcoal-burner, who trembles at the thought of Rübezahl, that malicious goblin, who has an army of mountain-dwarfs and gnomes at his command. So long as the sunlight inspires our Rat with confidence, however, he will work at his coal-pit, while one comrade is away in the forest, snaring game, and another has, perhaps, been dispatched to the precincts of civilization with his wagon-load of coal. Yes! the Pine Rat sometimes treads the streets of cities,—nay, even extends his wanderings to the banks of the Delaware and the Hudson, to Philadelphia and Trenton, to Jersey City and New York. Then, who so sharp as the grimy tatterdemalion, who passes from street to street and from house to house, with his swart and rickety wagon, and his jangling bell, the discordant clangor of which, when we hear it, calls up horrible recollections of the bells that froze our hearts in plague-stricken cities of other lands, when doomed galley-slaves and forçats wheeled awful vehicles of putrefaction through the street
s, clashing and clinking their clamorous bells for more and still more corpses, and foully jesting over the Death which they knew was already upon them! But the long-drawn, monotonous, nasal cry of the charcoal-vender—who has not heard it?—“Cha-r-coa’! Cha-r-coa’!”—is more cheerful than the demoniac laughter of the desperate galley-slaves, and his bell sounds musically when we hear it and think of theirs. Sometimes a couple of these peregrinants may be seen to encounter each other in the streets, and straightway there is an adjournment to the nearest bar-room, where the most scientific method of “springing the arch” is discussed over a glass of whiskey, at three cents the quart. Springing the arch, though few may be able to interpret the phrase, is a trick by which every housewife has suffered. It is the secret of piling the coal into the measure in such a manner as to make the smaller quantity pass for the larger, or, in other words, to make three pecks go for a bushel. So the Pine Rat vindicates his claim to a common humanity with all the rest of us men and women; for have not we all our secret and most approved method of springing the arch,—of palming off our three short pecks for a full and bounteous imperial bushel? Ah, yes! brothers and sisters, whisper it, if you will, below your breath, but we all can do the Pine Rat’s trick!

  We shall not suffer his company much longer in this world,—poor, neglected, pitiable, darkened soul that he is, this fellow-citizen of ours. He must move on; for civilization, like a stern, prosaic policeman, will have no idlers in the path. There must be no vagrants, not even in the forest, the once free and merry greenwood, our policeman-civilization says; nay, the forest, even, must keep a-moving! We must have farms here, and happy homesteads, and orchards heavy with promise of cider, and wheat golden as hope, instead of silent aisles and avenues of mournful pine-trees, sheltering such forlorn miscreations as our poor cranberry-stealing friends! Railways are piercing the Pines; surveyors are marking them out in imaginary squares; market-gardeners are engaging land; and farmers are clearing it. The Rat is driven from point to point, from one means of subsistence to another; and shortly, he will have to make the bitter choice between regulated labor and starvation clean off from the face of the earth. There is no room for a gypsy in all our wide America! The Rat must follow the Indian,—must fade like breath from a window-pane in winter!