Stray

“ Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it; moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar, their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tide-water. ”

“ A strait, leagues in width, separates them from the mainland. Far too wide to be crossed by the strongest swimmer amongst them—too wide for them to be descried from the opposite side, even through a telescope! And the inland is a mere strip of sea-washed rock, running parallel to the coast, cliff-bound, table-topped, sterile, treeless—and, to all appearance, waterless!
As this last thought comes uppermost—along with the recollection that their boat is gone—what was at first only a flurry of excited apprehension, becomes a fixed fear. ”

“ The grayling fisherman on the Northern streams has the water ousels for his constant and charming companions, true to the mountain river as in the days of Merlin and Vivien, busy as big black-and-white bees as they flit up-stream and down-stream, flying boldly into the waterfalls, dropping silently from mossy stones into the clear brown eddies, singing when the sunbeams shine and warm the crag-tops, and even floating and singing on the water, like aquatic robins. ”

“ The blown world of your uncertainty shrinks to the normal. From the haze of your consciousness, as through a fog, loom the old familiar forest, and the hills, and the River. Slowly you creep from that strange enchanted land. The sullen trout yields. In all gentleness you float him within reach of your net. Quietly, breathlessly you walk ashore, and over the beach, and yet an unnecessary hundred feet from the water lest he retain still a flop. Then you lay him upon the stones and lift up your heart in rejoicing.
How you get to camp you never clearly know. Exultation lifts your feet. ”

“ How delightful it is in this country, so destitute of large streams, to sit under the overshadowing branches of the Eucalypti, near the river, watching the flights of wild fowl, engaged in catching the fish, with which this river abounds, or seeing the young amphibious blacks amusing themselves by throwing stones into the deep part of the stream, and diving in order to catch them before they reach the bottom. ”

“ But all the real river-noises were there; the birds were singing endlessly in the groves; the gulls with their hoarse language were flying seawards from the mud-flats of Truro; the water was gently lapping the sides of the boat; and voices could be heard from the distances higher up and lower down the stream. ”

“ In seas and lakes and swampy pools strange fishes swam, up from the salt waters odd reptiles crawled to sun themselves upon the sandy shore or make their way through the dense jungles of the swamps, and out where the ocean waves were dashing, fierce monsters of the sea darted on their prey, or churned the water into foam in savage fights with each other. ”

“ Woodcocks, fieldfares, redwing thrushes, snow buntings, and starlings are at this moment more plentiful than we ever saw them before; while Arctic sea-fowl in great numbers crowd our creeks and bays, and immense flocks of grallatores, curlews, gedwits, purrs, dunlins, and oyster-catchers, may be seen all along our shores diligently attending the sea margin as the tide recedes, or with weird and wild scream urging their eccentric flights from an exhausted sandbank in indefatigable search of “fresh fields and pastures new.” ”

“ Or a brook, which is a tiny trout stream, babbles on through the meadows and pastures, and has its attractions too. A stream is always the chief artery of the land, as in it are found the life-giving elements. All the birds, all the plants, flock to its banks, and its wooded sides are hushed by the subdued hum of insects. There are tall green brackens—brackens unfurling their fronds to the light, and full of the atoms of beautiful summer. ”

“ But when the mist lifts, and we see that the narrow strait leads out into a boundless sea that lies flashing in the sunshine to the horizon, then we find out the worth of that little driblet of water at our feet. It connects with the open sea, and that swathes the world. ”

“ The surface of the water is stirred, perhaps, by whirling water-beetles, or some startled trout, seeking shelter beneath fallen logs or roots. The falls, too, are quiet; no wind stirs, and the whole Valley floor is a mosaic of greens and purples, yellows and reds. ”

“ Behind them, some distance back, was a dense forest, and, nearer to them was the dreadful saw-grass. Over the stretch of water myriads of birds were flying, while, every now and then, a splash and a shower of glistening drops told that a hungry fish was trying to get an early breakfast. ”

“ The foul tide rises and falls between low shores where, when it ebbs, are seen oozy shoals of slime, and every keel or paddle that stirs the surface of the river brings up the loathsomeness of the bottom. ”

“ Striveling that strait place, a strength of the land,
Why with Strabrock and Strathern strives thou to yarn,
When Strabogie shall destroy all the straiberries;
The strands of Strabrock shall stream them with blood,
Three storks in a stall shall stand them before,
Stuffed all is steel weed, all on horse-back. ”

“ Now when the tide was up all these posts and hurdles were covered with water, and as the fish swam up to meet the fresh stream, a great many would sometimes be over the ground inclosed by the weir, searching about for food washed down by the stream, or for the little shrimps and other water creatures that hung about the hurdles, which were a favourite place too with mussels, which cling to such wood-work by thousands. ”

“ Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest. ”

“ Fish glitter again in the hurrying streams, building their nests and houses like the others—often obeying a spring impulse to rush from lake to outlet or from quiet water to streamhead, ending their journey suddenly and forever amid wire meshes. The brooks are icy on the mildest days with melted snow from the mountains, where hemlocks green as arctic waters, shutting out the sun, keep a white floor long after the valley wears grasses. ”

“ Although it occurs in all our streams, whether rapid or gentle, small or large, in the mill-dam overshadowed by tall forest-trees, or in the open lake margined with reeds, you must never expect to find it in impure waters. Let the place be deep or shallow, broad or narrow, the water must be clear enough to allow the sun’s rays to fall unimpaired on the rich coat of mail that covers the body of the Sun-fish. ”

“ A tiny stream, a pixy’s river, slips from beneath a bowlder in a wood long known, and leads through thicket, glade, and clearing to a terrifying land, desolated by ancient fires and strewn with blackened stones and charred boughs. The place itself is athirst, and the dreamer kneels to drink. The tiny stream is dark, like a deep water, and bitter cold as if it flowed through ice. A staff thrust down cannot sound its depths. ”

“ Why the Narrows should be any more likely to contain a big trout than any of the other three pools you would not be able to explain. In half an hour it will be dark. You hurry. In the forest it is already twilight, but by now you know the forest well. Preoccupied, feverish with your great idea, you hasten on. The birds, silent all in the brooding of night, rise ghostly to right and left. Shadows steal away like hostile spies among the treetrunks. The silver of last daylight gleams ahead of you through the brush. ”

“ For here is the tropic sea, blue as a sapphire, gleaming like a diamond, glancing and throbbing with such jewels of light that it looks as though thousands of silver fishes were jumping in the meshes of a golden net, flung down by the sun from the sky. All at once, from amidst these myriads of sparkles a number flash higher, leap into the air, and fly, like bright arrows, towards you. Onwards they come, and from being light only, they pass into form and substance, begin to live, to move with sense and volition, and, all at once, they are fishes, flying with wings over their home of the sea. ”

“ In a word, we must think of the stream and flow of the river, not of some eddies in it, or a back-wash here and there. Though it does not seem to be, yet the water that makes these is really going the way that the stream is, and our "noblest numbers," when closely analysed, are found to be "sculduddery" after all. ”

“ The shores were strewed with them in all stages; many struck down in youth, with their young foliage about them; others in the sere and yellow leaf, while others again stripped of leaf and bark, are piled in great ‘wreck heaps,’ where the current has hurled them, or floating down the stream, in time to become a snag and lie in wait to impale some unconscious vessel. ”

“ Not even the flight of the birds from the south, unbelievable in wonder as this is, is more miraculous than the run of the fish, from the vast spaces of ocean up all our fresh-water streams for hundreds of miles. Their bright thousands find their way unerringly, up into the heart of the country. ”

“ This Strait is extreme cold, with frost and snow continually; the trees seem to stoop with the burden of the weather, and yet are green continually, and many good and sweet herbs do very plentifully grow and increase under them. The breadth of the Strait is in some places a league, in some other places two leagues and three leagues, and in some other four leagues; but the narrowest place hath a league over.
The 24th of August we arrived at an island in the Straits, where we found great store of fowl which could not fly, of the bigness of geese ”

“ Scarcely have we hauled our boat up on the sand, and deposited our provisions and water in the roofless house, when we hear a commotion in the river—a swarm of fish called 'tailer' are making havoc among a 'school' of small mullet, many of which fling themselves out upon the sand. ”

“ Throughout the strait so expressively named by its explorers, the capriciousness of the sea culminates, despite the shoalness and the protection from easterly and westerly winds; the storm currents and tide-currents are half the time opposed, raising breakers even when the air is nearly still ”

“ Between the black worm-eaten headlands there are little bights and havens, well screened from the wind and the commotion of the external sea, where the sand and weeds look up into the gazer's face from a depth of tranquil water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flickering from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine. ”

“ Fish, in the numerous rivers along this part of the coast, forms a never- failing article of food for the blacks, whom I have seen, at the MacLeay and Nambucca rivers, spear in a few minutes sufficient fish for the whole tribe, on the shallow sand-banks and mud-flats on that part of the river, which rises and falls with the tide. ”

“ Innumerable water-birds, both of rivers and seas, derive in like manner their food indifferently from either element; so that the abundance or scarcity of prey in one induces them either to forsake or more constantly to haunt the other. Thus an intimate connection between the state of the animate creation in a lake or river, and in the adjoining dry land, is maintained; or between a continent, with its lakes and rivers, and the ocean. It is well known that many birds migrate, during stormy seasons, from the sea-shore into the interior, in search of food ”

“ Marine testacea.—The aquatic animals and plants which inhabit an estuary are liable, like the trees and land animals which people the alluvial plains of a great river, to be swept from time to time far into the deep; for as a river is perpetually shifting its course, and undermining a portion of its banks with the forests which cover them, so the marine current alters its direction from time to time, and bears away the banks of sand and mud against which it turns its force. ”

“ Each and every barge and boat was hard and fast aground, and when the gray daylight came stealing across the lake there was no lake to be seen, only a reeking marsh, covered for miles with a welter of green slime and decaying vegetable matter across which it would seem no human being or animal could flounder. ”

“ They devoured even their own species. Living mostly in the open seas or fresh-water lagoons, they sometimes chased their prey far up the rivers, and sometimes basked in the sunshine on the sands of the shore. ”

“ Down every glen flows a noisy mountain stream, dashing along its rocky course with so many tiny waterfalls and impatient splashes, that the gurgling and bubbling of brooks come up even into the quietness of the tableland and mingle with the singing of the birds and the humming of the bees among the heather. ”

“ The fisherman, meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same summer’s sun, arbitrating in other cases between muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land, within a pole’s length of where the larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very much like a river,
—“renning aie downward to the sea.” ”

“ The innumerable bays and straits created by this cluster, most of them navigable for almost any kind of craft, together with the islands themselves, covered with forests, and shooting up the most perfect form of the pointed fir-tree, must present a rare vision to him who shall ever have the privilege of sailing over them in a baloon. ”