You find your face growing long; you think
of funerals; make a timid and humble remark which you hope will be
acceptable and within the range of their comprehension. No answer: you
evidently have their pity. No word breaks the sullen silence, except an
occasional request to pass something, uttered with an effort as if the
speaker had the lockjaw. The meal is bolted with frightful rapidity,
generally in five or six minutes. I remember that I was considerably
scared and dazed, on my first acquaintance with these mountain-fauns,
at seeing such a systematic snatching and grabbing, such a ferocious
plying of knives and forks and rattling of cups, by those huge-limbed,
brawny, whiskered fellows.
It is difficult to describe the perennial beauty of the hemlock trees,
with their dark, rich foliage-masses and aromatic odor. It seems a
sacrilege to destroy them so ruthlessly. When stripped of their bark
and stained with the dark-red sap, they look like fallen giants spoiled
of their armor, lying there prone and white-naked, as if there had been
a battle of the giants and the gods. These giants were perfumed, it
seems. Their huge green plumes are now withered and torn, and their red
blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams.
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