ROUND POND—THE PILE DRIVER—A THEORY FOR SPIRITUALISTS.
We put up our tents the next evening, on a bold bluff near the outlet of Round Pond, a picturesque and pleasant sheet of water, some eight or ten miles in circumference. It lay there still and waveless, in that calm summer evening, as glassy and smooth as if no breeze had ever stirred its surface. All around it were old forests, old hills and rocks, and away off in the distance were the tall peaks of the Adirondacks, standing up grim, solemn, and shadowy in the distance. These peaks are seen from almost every direction. They tower so far above the surrounding highlands, that they seem always to be peering over the intervening ranges, as if holding an everlasting watch over the broad wilderness beneath them. This lake is probably more than a thousand feet above the Rackett, and the river falls that distance principally at the two rapids around which our boats were carried. The rest of the way it is a deep, sluggish stream, so that the descent may be reckoned within less than three miles. A ledge of rocks forms the lower boundary of the lake, through which the water, at some remote period, broke its way, and it goes roaring down rapids for three-quarters of a mile, then moves in a sluggish current across a plain of several miles in extent; then plunges down a steep descent for over a mile and a half to subside again into quiet, and move on with a sluggish current to plunge down the ledges again into Tupper\'s Lake. There are no perpendicular falls of more than twenty feet, but the water goes plunging, and boiling, and foaming down shelving rocks, and eddying, and whirling around immense boulders, rushing and roaring through the gorges with a voice like thunder. These falls are all useless here, and probably will be for centuries to come; but were they out in the "living world," in the midst of civilization, with a fertile and populous region about them, they would soon be harnessed to great wheels, and made utilitarian; the clank of machinery would soon be heard above the roar of their waters. They would do an immensity of labor on their returnless journey to the ocean. But here, they are utterly valueless, wasting their mighty power upon desolate rocks, rushing in mad and impotent fury forever through a region of barrenness and sterility, so far as the uses of civilization are concerned, a region where the manufacturer or the agriculturist will never tarry, until the world shall be so full of people that necessity will drive them to the mountains, to build up the waste places of the earth. Opposite, and across the bay from where our tents were pitched, I noticed that a small stream entered the lake, and Smith and myself crossed over to experiment among the trout I knew would be gathered there. We were entirely successful, for we took one at almost every throw. I have more than once stated, that the trout of these lakes and rivers, in the warm season, congregate where the cold streams enter; and if the sportsman will search out the little brooks, no matter how small, and cast his fly across where their waters enter the lake or river, he will be sure to find trout in any of the hot summer months.
We returned to camp before the sun went behind the hills, with our fish ready for the pan, and our boatmen provided us with a meal of jerked venison, pork, and trout, which an epicure might envy, and to which a hard day\'s journey and an appetite sharpened by the bracing influence of the pure mountain air, gave a peculiar relish. It was a pleasant thing to see the moon come up from among the trees that formed a dark outline to the lake away off to the east, and travel up into the sky; to see how faithfully it was given back from down in the stirless waters, and how the stars twinkled and glowed around it in the depths below, as they did in the depths above. There was the moon, and there the stars, all bright and glorious in the heavens above; and there another moon, and other stars, as bright and glorious, down in the vault below; the lake floating, as it were, an almost viewless mist, a shadowy and transparent veil between. As we sat, in the greyness of twilight, in front of our tents, a curious sound came over the lake from the opposite shore, so like civilization that it startled us for a moment. Here we were, fifty miles from a house, away in the forest beyond the sound of anything savoring of human agency, and yet we heard distinctly what was for all the world like the blows of an axe or hammer upon a stake, driving it into the earth. It had the peculiar ring, which any one will recognise who has driven a stake into ground covered with water, by blows given by the side instead of the head of an axe. These blows were given at intervals so regular, that we all suspended smoking, certain that there were other sportsmen beside ourselves in the neighborhood of this lake.
"Who in the world is that?" asked Smith, of Martin, who seemed to enjoy our astonishment.
"That," replied Martin, "is a gentleman known in these parts as the \'Pile-driver.\' He visits all these lakes in the summer season, and though, as a general thing, he travels alone, yet he sometimes has half a dozen friends with him. If you\'ll listen a moment, may be you\'ll find that he has a friend in the neighborhood now who will drive a pile in another place."
Sure enough, in a moment the same ringing blows came from a reedy spot in a different part of the bay.
"The bird that makes that noise," said Martin, "is about the homeliest creature in these woods. It is a small grey heron, that lights down among the grass and weeds to hunt for small frogs and such little fish as swim along the shore. When he drives his pile, he stands with his neck and long bill pointed straight up, and pumping the air into his throat, sends it oat with the strange sound you have heard. It is the resemblance of the sound to that made by driving a stake into ground covered with water, that gives him his name. He\'s an awkward, filthy bird, but he helps to make up the noises one hears in these wild regions."
"My first thought was," said Smith, "that we had got among the spirits of the woods, and that they were \'rapping\' their indignation at our presence, there was something so human about it."
"By the way," remarked the Doctor, "and you remind me of the subject, what a strange delusion is this Spiritualism, to the \'manifestations\' of which you refer, and how singular it is that men of strong natural sense and cultivated minds, should be drawn into it. We all know such. Their delusion, too, is stronger than mere speculative belief. It is a faith which to them appears to amount to absolute knowledge. They have no doubt or hesitancy on the subject. Their convictions are perfect; such, that were they as strong in their faith as Christians, as they are in the reality of Spiritualism, they would be able to move mountains."
"I have noticed this intensity of their faith," said Smith; "and while I utterly reject the whole theory of Spiritualism, I could never join in the ridicule of its earnest devotees. There is something that commands my respect in this strong faith, when honestly entertained, however stupendous the error may be to which it clings. There is something, to my mind, too solemn for derision in the idea of communing with the spirits of the departed, or that the time is approaching when living men and the souls of the physically dead, are to meet, as it were, face to face, and know each other as they are. It is one which I can, and do reject, but cannot ridicule. The world, however, regards it differently. And yet with all the contempt and derision that has been poured upon this singular delusion, its devotees have multiplied beyond all precedent in the history of the world. They number, it is said, in this country alone, millions, and have some forty or more newspapers in the exclusive advocacy of their theory."
"The wise people of this world," said Spalding, "that is, those who are wise in their day and generation, laugh at the believers in this modern theory of Spiritualism. They pity them, too, as the unhappy devotees of a faith which sober reason and all the experience of the past prove to be as unsubstantial as the moonbeams that dance upon the waters at midnight. Still these same devotees point to the demonstrations of what they regard as living facts, phenomena palpable to the senses, things that appeal to the eye, the ear, and the touch, and say that these are higher proofs than all the dogmas of philosophy, all the observation and experience of former times, all the logic of the past. And here is the issue between Spiritualism and the mass of mankind who deride and condemn it.
"Now, be it known to you, that I am no Spiritualist. I reject not all the evidences of the phenomena upon which it is based, but I utterly deny that such phenomena are the works of disembodied spirits. I myself have seen what utterly confounded me, and while I reject all idea of supernatural agencies, all interposition of departed spirits, yet I have become thoroughly satisfied that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. These phenomena of which the Spiritualists speak, I will not undertake to pronounce all lies. Some of them are doubtless impostures—the work of knaves, who speculate upon the credulity and superstitions which are attributes of the human mind; but they are not all such. But while I admit their reality, I insist that such as are so, are the results of natural laws, which will one day be discovered, and which will turn out to be as simple as the spirit which presides over the telegraph, or that which constitutes the life of a steam engine. There may be, and probably is, a great undiscovered principle which underlays these spiritual manifestations, as they are called, and MIND is after it, looking for it carefully; and what MIND has once started in pursuit of earnestly, it seldom fails to overtake.
"I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to furnish a theory for the Spiritualists to stand upon, based upon the demonstrations of the past, the evidences brought to light by the researches of science, which at all events should have about it truth enough to give color and respectability even to an error as stupendous as that of Spiritualism. This theory I have predicated upon the progress of the material world, aside from animal life, showing that what may ha............