Crow, Bears, Squirrel, Cats, Cockroaches, Snakes
Imagine if you will a country in which travel was so difficult that the wife of the President of the United States in moving from Baltimore to Washington, got lost and wandered aimlessly through the forest without direction; where communications were by hand-delivered mail; where virtually everyone regardless of social status, could and did read and write; where the mysteries of a new and undeveloped country were revealed to the Europeans who thirsted for knowledge of this new land and dreamed of being there.
William Bartram and Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur) provided images in the mind's eye of this strange and wondrous place. In their prose they described scenes that at first stretched the imagination to the limits. Were they accurate in their descriptions? I leave it to today's reader to decide for him/herself.
Following is an excerpt from Crevecoeur's Letters From an American Farmer. (Crevecoeur was neither an American (unless naturalized) or a farmer (in the true sense of tilling the soil) but his writings portray the world of rural life in America as only one enthralled by the wonders of the environment surrounding a 1770 American farmer could write.) Probably the most familiar passage from Crevecoeur's book is about snakes; so here goes!
"As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp stubble field. The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet long; the fugitive a water snake, nearly of equal dimensions. They soon met and in the fury of their first encounter, they appeared in an instant firmly twisted together; and whilst their united tails beat the ground, they mutually tried with open jaws to lacerate each other. What a fell aspect did they present! their heads were compressed to a very small size, their eyes flashed fire; and after this conflict had lasted about five minutes, the second found means to disengage itself from the first, and hurried toward the ditch. Its antagonist instantly assumed a new posture, and half creeping and half erect, with a majestic mien, overtook and attacked the other again, which placed itself in the same attitude, and prepared to resist. The scene was uncommon and beautiful; for thus opposed they fought with their jaws, biting each other with the utmost rage; but notwithstanding this appearance of mutual courage and fury, the water snake seemed desirous of retreating toward the ditch, its natural element. This was no sooner perceived by the keen-eyed black one, than twisting its tail twice round a stalk of hemp, and seizing its adversary by the throat, not by means of its jaws, but by twisting its own neck twice round that of the water snake, pulled it back from the ditch. To prevent a defeat the latter took hold likewise of a stalk on the bank, and by acquisition of that point of resistance became a match for its fierce antagonist. Strange was this to behold; two great snakes strongly adhering to the ground mutually fastened together by means of the writhings which lashed them to each other, and stretched at their full length, they pulled but pulled in vain; and in moments of greatest exertions that part of their bodies which was entwined, seemed extremely small, while the rest appeared inflated, and now and then convulsed with strong undulations, rapidly following each other. Their eyes seemed on fire, and ready to start out of their heads; at one time the conflict seemed decided; the water snake bent itself into two great folds, and by that operation rendered the other more than commonly outstretched; the next minute the new struggles of the black one gained an unexpected superiority, it acquired two great folds likewise, which necessarily extended the body of its adversary in proportion as it had contracted its own. These effort were alternate; victory seemed doubtful, inclining sometimes to the one side and sometimes to the other; until at last the stalk to which the black snake fastened, suddenly gave way, and in consequence of this accident they both plunged into the ditch. The water did not extinguish their vindictive rage; for by their agitations I could trace, through not distinguish, their mutual attacks. They soon re-appeared on the surface twisted together, as in their first onset; but the black snake seemed to retain its wonted superiority, for its head was exactly fixed above that of the other, which it incessantly pressed down under the water, until it was stifled, and sunk. The victor no sooner perceived its enemy incapable of farther resistance, than (sic) abandoning it to the current, it returned to shore and disappeared."
Now put this in perspective, Europeans were being told of a land where watermelons grew as large as houses, trees on which honey grew, springs of rum and brandy, flax plants that bore woven cloth from their branches, hoop snakes that spun through the swamps coiled as a wheel, whip-snakes that killed cattle by lashing them to death with their tails, serpents exhaling fatal gasses (from the World of Washington Irving by Van Wyck Brooks). Crevecoeur did little to dispel the image with his reference to giant hemp (flax?) plants which could be climbed much like a tree. What to believe? At the very least, Crevecoeur was a master teller of tales as he gives us a glimpse of a distant past.
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