Tuesday. 8 a.m. — Ascend the Chesterfield Mountain with Miss Frances and Miss MaryBrown.
The Connecticut is about twenty rods wide between Brattleboro and Hinsdale. This mountain, according to Frost, 1064 feet high. It is the most remarkable feature here. The village of Brattleboro is peculiar for the nearness of the primitive wood and the mountain.
Within three rods of Brown's house was excellent botanical ground on the side of a primitive wooded hillside, and still better along the Coldwater Path. But, above all, this everlasting mountain is forever lowering over the village, shortening the day and wearing a misty cap each morning. You look up to its top at a steep angle from the village streets.
A great part belongs to the Insane Asylum.
This town will be convicted of folly if they ever permit this mountain to be laid bare. Francis B. says its Indian name is Wantastiquet, from the name of West River above.
Very abundant about B. the Gerardia tenuifolia, in prime, which I at first mistook for the purpurea. The latter I did not see. High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus as well as corymbosus. The (apparently) Platanthera orbiculata (?) leaves, round and flat on ground (vide press); another by it with larger and more oblong leaves.
Pine-sap. A tuft of five-divided leaves, fifteen or eighteen inches high, slightly fern-like (vide press). Galium circwzans var. lanceolatum. Top of the mountain covered with wood.
Saw Ascutney, between forty and fifty miles up the river, but not Monadnock on account of woods.
P. M. — To and up a brook north of Brown's house.
A large alternate cornel, four or five inches in diameter, a dark-gray stem.
The kidney-shaped leaves of the Asarum Canadense common there.
Panax quinquefolium, with peculiar flat scarlet fruit in a little umbel.
Clinopodium vulgare, or basil, apparently flatted down by a freshet, rather past prime; and spearmint in brook just above.
Close behind Brown's, Liparis liliifolia, or tway-blade, leaves and bulb.
A very interesting sight from the top of the mountain was that of the cars so nearly under you, apparently creeping along, you could see so much of their course.
The epigaea was very abundant on the hill behind Brown's and elsewhere in B.
The Populus monilifera grows on West River, but I did not see it.
The Erigeron Philadelphicus I saw pressed, with in numerable fine rays.
Scouring-rush was common along the Coldwater Path and elsewhere.
The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther (Felis concolor) (cougar, catamount, painter, American lion, puma), which was killed, according to a written notice attached, on the 15th of June by the Saranac Club of Brattleboro, six young men, on a fishing and hunting excursion.
This paper described it as eight feet in extreme length and weighing one hundred and ten pounds. The Brattleboro newspaper says its body was " 4 feet 11 inches in length, and the tail 2 feet 9 inches; the animal weighed 108 pounds."
I was surprised at its great size and apparent strength. It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here. It was evident that it could level a platoon of men with a stroke of its paw.
I was particularly impressed by the size of its limbs, the size of its canine teeth, and its great white claws.
I do not see but this affords a sufficient foundation for the stories of the lion heard and its skins seen near Boston by the first settlers. This creature was very catlike, though the tail was not tapering, but as large at the extremity as anywhere, yet not tufted like the lion's. It had a long neck, a long thin body, like a lean cat. Its fore feet were about six inches long by four or five wide, as set up.
I talked with the man who shot him, a Mr. Kellogg, a lawyer. They were fishing on one of the Saranac Lakes, their guide being the Harvey Moody whom Hammond describes, when they heard the noise of some creature threshing about amid the bushes on the hillside. The guide suspected that it was a panther which had caught a deer. He reconnoitred and found that it was a panther which had got one fore paw (the left) in one of his great double-spring, long teethed or hooked bear- traps. He had several of these traps set (without bait) in the neighborhood.
It fell to Kellogg's lot to advance with the guide and shoot him. They approached within six or seven rods, saw that the panther was held firmly, and fired just as he raised his head to look at them. The ball entered just above his nose, pierced his brain, and killed him at once.
The guide got the bounty of twenty-five dollars, but the game fell to his employers. A slice had been sheared off one side of each ear to secure this with.
It was a male. The guide thought it an old one, but Kellogg said that, as they were returning with it, the inhabitants regarded it as common; they only kicked it aside in the road, remarking that was a large one.
I talked also with the Mr. Chamberlin who set it up. He showed me how sharp the edges of the broad grinders were just behind the canine teeth. They were zigzag, and shut over the under, scraping close like shears and, as he proved, would cut off a straw clean.
This animal looked very thin as set up, and probably in some states of his body would have weighed much more. Kellogg said that, freshly killed, the body showed the nerves much more than as set up.
The color, etc., agreed very well with the account in Thompson's History of Vermont, except that there was, now at least, no yellow about the mouth or chin, but whitish. It was, in the main, the universal color of this family, or a little browner. According to Thompson, it is brown-red on the back, reddish-gray on the sides, whitish or light-ash on the belly; tail like the back above, except its extremity, which is brownish-black, not tufted; chin, upper lip, and inside of ears, yellowish-white. Hairs on back, short, brownish tipped with red; on the belly, longer, lighter, tipped with white; hairs of face like back with whitish hairs intermingled. Canines conical, claws pearly-white. Length, nose to tail, four feet eight inches ; tail, two feet six inches; top of head to point of nose, ten inches; width across forehead, eight inches. Length of fore legs, one foot two inches ; hind, one foot four inches. Weight usually about one hundred pounds.
The largest he ever knew was seven feet in extreme length and weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds. One had been known to leap up a precipice fifteen feet high with a calf in his mouth. Vide Lawson, Hunter, and Jefferson in Book of Facts. Hunter when near the Rocky Mountains says, "So much were they to be apprehended . . . that no one ever ventured to go out alone, even on the most trifling occasion." He makes two kinds.
Emmons makes the extreme length of one of the largest cougars nine feet four inches, and the greatest length of the canine tooth of the upper jaw from the gum nine tenths of an inch. I think that the teeth of the one I saw were much larger.
Says it is cowardly and "rarely if ever attacks man;" that a hunter met five in St. Lawrence County, N. Y., and, with his dog and gun only, killed three that day and the other two the next. Yet he will follow a man's track a great distance. Scream at evening heard for miles. Thinks about 45° its northern range.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1856
It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here. Compare March 23, 1856 (" But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.") See also Feds Declare Catamount Extinct and The Last Catamount in Vermont
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