



Produced by JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online Distributed
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        Books by Mr. Torrey.

    BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25.
    A RAMBLER'S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25.
    THE FOOT-PATH WAY. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
    A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 16mo, $1.25.
    SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE. 16mo, $1.25.

        HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
         BOSTON AND NEW YORK.




        SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE

                     BY

               BRADFORD TORREY


    We travelled in the print of olden wars;
        Yet all the land was green.

                           ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

               [Illustration]

            BOSTON AND NEW YORK
       HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
       The Riverside Press, Cambridge
                    1896




              Copyright, 1896,
             BY BRADFORD TORREY.

            _All rights reserved._


_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.




CONTENTS.


                                               PAGE

    AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE                  1

    LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN                             28

    CHICKAMAUGA                                  57

    ORCHARD KNOB AND THE NATIONAL CEMETERY       89

    AN AFTERNOON BY THE RIVER                   102

    A MORNING IN THE NORTH WOODS                113

    A WEEK ON WALDEN'S RIDGE                    124

    SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES                   183

    A LIST OF BIRDS                             213

    INDEX                                       221




SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE.




AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE.


I reached Chattanooga on the evening of April 26th, in the midst of
a rattling thunder-shower,--which, to look back upon it, seems to
have been prophetic,--and the next morning, after an early breakfast,
took an electric car for Missionary Ridge. Among my fellow-passengers
were four Louisiana veterans fresh from their annual reunion at
Birmingham, where, doubtless, their hearts had been kindled by much
fervent oratory, as well as by much private talk of those bygone days
when they did everything but die for the cause they loved. As the
car mounted the Ridge, one of them called his companions' attention
to a place down the valley where "the Rebels and the Yankees" (his
own words) used to meet to play cards. "A regular gambling-hole,"
he called it. Their boys brought back lots of coffee. In another
direction was a spot where the Rebels once "had a regular picnic,"
killing some extraordinary number of Yankees in some incredibly
brief time. I interrupted the conversation, and at the same time
made myself known as a stranger and a Northerner, by inquiring after
the whereabouts of Orchard Knob, General Grant's headquarters; and
the same man, who seemed to be the spokesman of the party, after
pointing out the place, a savin-sprinkled knoll between us and the
city, kindly invited me to go with him and his comrades up to the
tower,--on the site of General Bragg's headquarters,--where he would
show me the whole battlefield and tell me about the fight.

We left the car together for that purpose, and walked up the <DW72> to
the foot of the observatory,--an open structure of iron, erected by
the national government; but just then my ear caught somewhere beyond
us the song of a Bachman's finch,--a song I had heard a year before
in the pine woods of Florida, and, in my ignorance, was unprepared
for here. I must see the bird and make sure of its identity. It led
me a little chase, and when I had seen it I must look also at a
summer tanager, a chat, and so on, one thing leading to another; and
by the time I returned to the observatory the veterans had come down
and were under some apple-trees, from one of which the spokesman was
cutting a big walking-stick. He had stood under those trees--which
were now in bloom--thirty years before, he said, with General Bragg
himself.

I was sorry to have missed his story of the battle, and ashamed to
have seemed ungrateful and rude, but I forget what apology I offered.
At this distance it is hard to see how I could have got out of the
affair with much dignity. I might have heard all about the battle
from a man who was there, and instead I went off to listen to a
sparrow singing in a bush. I thought, to be sure, that the men would
be longer upon the observatory, and that I should still be in season.
Probably that was my excuse, if I made one; and in all likelihood
the veteran was too completely taken up with his own concerns to
think twice about the vagaries of a stray Yankee, who seemed to be
an odd stick, to say nothing worse of him. Well, the loss, such
as it was, was mine, not his; and I have lost too much time in the
way of business to fret over a little lost (or saved) in the way of
pleasure. As for any apparent lack of patriotic feeling, I suppose
that the noblest patriot in the world, if he chanced to be also an
ornithologist, would notice a bird even amid the smoke of battle; and
why should not I do as much on a field from which the battle smoke
had vanished thirty years before?

So I reason now; at the time I had no leisure for such sophistries.
Every moment brought some fresh distraction. The long