Theodore Winthrop

“ Lightning, besides its business of revelation, had some gymnastic feats of its own to show the world; to spring at some great round-topped, toppling cloud-crag, and down to the valleys beneath; to shoot through tunnels of darkness, and across chasms, hanging a bending line of light athwart, like the cable bridges of the Andes. ”

“ In such isolated halts in a man’s life, when the future is not so certain as to make him disdain the past, he discovers the lessons there were in empiric days or years, of hurry and dash. In the lonely forest, dark with midnight and storms, where his fire casts but a gloaming light, — in such a solitude a man self-dependent will hear the oracles speak to him if they are to speak. ”

“ Fudnun took his supper, and soon was asleep, coiled in a heap among the saddles. As for me, I watched and drowsed, squatted before the fire, mummied in my blankets. Not a position, certainly, for cheerful reveries. A drizzle, thick as metaphysics, surrounded me. In its glowing cavity was my fire, eating its way slowly into the dead old heart of the tree, baking my face, but not drying my back. I was fortunately hungry, and hunger is excellent entertainment. A hungry man has something to think of, and if be is his own cook, something to do. ”

“ When August’s sun, the remorseless, is gone, whether behind the ragged rims of a hurricane or the crest of a sierra, men and horses revive in that long shade. Twilight is sweet and restoring in itself, and also to an unforeseeing trio of mustangs, as promising the period when men encamp and horses are unsaddled. Therefore, now, although the air was heavy and the light lurid, we chased along the trail, mounting slowly ever, and winding on through files of pines ”

“ Nor are men on a hooihut considering damage to their integuments. On a hooihut, we wear no tiles that to-morrow will be pulp; nor coats with power to shrink and never again be shapely. Therefore, while the air beat upon us with electric thrills, and the furious excitements of the tempest were around us, we dashed along the narrow thread of the trail between the innumerable pines, — dashed along, acting with the might of the storm, as if we were a part of it, and reacting with ardors of our own against its fury.
Ferdinand, wrapped in a white blanket, led the way ”

“ And here, for fifteen hundred feet, we too must climb, driving our horses before us; we bending forward, and they struggling up on tiptoe and consuming energy far too rapidly.
The sun was prematurely gone when we reached the edge of easier slope above this mural front. Where I should have seen, westward, the Cascades and Tacoma bright as sunny cloud, but firmer than cloud, were now no mountains black with pines, was no Tacoma against the rose of sunset. ”

“ And, says Ferdinand, “it must be a race all day with time, all night with time, a close race with time to-morrow.” If uncertainty of success is a condition of success, we shall win the race. But no dalliance, no staying to study landscape; we must on, steadily as the Princess Parazaide, whatever sermons there be in the stones along our way.
Vast were the hilly sweeps we overcame. Nags of mine, ye had toil that penultimate day of August. But straight from far snow cliffs came electric airs, forerunners of the nightly gale. ”

“ The surges of wind were mightier than the furious rain drift, and with their strength and their roaring came the majesty of thunder, constant as the wind. Long ago, from where the clouds lay solid on the mountains great booming sounds had come, as if these masses rolling over the summits had struck with muffled crash upon crags below ”

“ Whenever we had climbed the long bulk of a dusty hill-side, dreary with wild sage, a stunted and abortive tree, the mean ensign of barrenness, and then descended the hot, thirsty slopes of a declivity as dreary, down in the valley always we found the antidote to dust, thirst, and sterility, the precious boon of water hidden among grass and trees, — sunshine’s gift brought from the snows to cure the pangs of sunshine. ”

“ For early, thoughtful years and eras of ours are saddened and bewildered by the sting of evil, others’ and our own; poisonous bigotries grapple with faith from its cradle; we are driven along the gantlet of selfishness; love, the surest test of nobleness, seems the most hopeless test, discovering only the ignoble; we dwell among comrades of chance, not choice, and cannot find our allies, know not any other law of growth than the unreflecting stir about us. ”

“ These clouds so black and terrible, hurrying on a night so black and dreary, were not then terrible and dreary in themselves, but only while there was no light to prove their beauty, — when light gleamed, they shone transcendent. ”

“ Not the wise traveller, to whom sleep or food never come amiss. By the Fountain of Fudnun the Jolly, to whom in less busy times life was a long joke, sleep, or repose not quite losing consciousness, might be permitted. For now my doubts of winning the race were beheaded by trenchant intuitions of success, and wriggled away into the background. Such doubts necessarily forecrawl a man on the march toward any object; it is well if he can timely destroy them, lest they trip up the rider’s hopeful ardor. ”

“ Thus far I had only the coarse public facts on Ferdinand as a theme for analysis. When Mystery takes care that a man shall exist, and have a few years’ career in villany or heroism, Mystery also takes care to set upon the man’s front a half-decipherable inscription. Fudnun was attractive, not repulsive, in the traits that mark character. ”

“ Indians only eat no pork when they have no pork. Not one to whom I have offered that viand of low civilization ever refused it, but clutched it with more or less ardor, proportioned to his state of repletion at the moment. My facts for induction on whistling among the Red Men are fewer. This one, however, I present confidently: Fudnun the Blanketeer whistled tunefully.
Ours was but a faint trail, rarely traversed, often illegible, even by full daylight, to untrained eyes, as I learned afterwards. ”