e sun as a guide. He knew that his course lay nearly northward, and it
was his purpose to travel only at night, as before; but unless he could
get out of the swamp during the day, and ascertain in what direction he
must travel, he could not go on during the night at all. If it should
clear off by evening, the pole star would show him his way, but there
was no promise of a clearing away. He must find the course during the
day, and he set about it at once, after examining his salt bag which he
had put around his body, under his shirt, on the night on which he got
it. The salt was saturated with water, and Sam's first impulse was to
wring it out; but it occurred to him that the water he should squeeze
out of it would be salt water, or in other words, that some of the salt
would come away with the water and be lost. If he let it dry gradually,
however, all the salt would remain, and he determined to let it dry,
carrying it, with that in view, over his shoulder. How to find out which
way was north was the question, and it puzzled him sorely. He knew the
general course of all the creeks in that part of the country, but as
they wind about in every direction it was impossible to get any
information out of the one he was near. It was his habit, when he wanted
to solve any difficult problem, to sit down and think of it in all its
bearings, and a very excellent habit that is too. Nearly half our
blunders, all through life, might be avoided if we would think carefully
before acting; and nearly half the useful things we know, have been
found out simply by somebody's thinking. Sam sat down on a log and said
to himself;--

"Now if there is anything in the woods which always or nearly always
points in any one direction, I can find it by looking. Then I can find
out which way it points, by remembering how the woods look around home,
where I know the points of the compass."

This was an excellent beginning, and Sam straightway began looking for
something which should guide him. A patch of sunflowers grew by the
creek, and he had heard that they always turn their heads to the sun,
but upon examining them, he found some of them turned one way and some
another, so that they were of no use whatever. Presently he observed
some beautiful green moss growing at the root and for a good many feet
up the trunk of a tree, and looking around he saw that the moss at the
roots of all the trees grew only or chiefly on one side, and that the
covered sid