ravellers, all anxious and doubting, and filled with gloom, were yet
stumbling in the forest, winding amid labyrinths of bog and brake, hill
and hollow, that every moment became wilder and more perplexing. To add
to their alarm, it was manifest that the day was fast approaching its
close. The sun had set, or was so low in the heavens that not a single
ray could be seen trembling on the tallest tree; and thus was lost the
only means of deciding towards what quarter of the compass they were
directing their steps. The mosses on the trees were appealed to in
vain,--as they will be by all who expect to find them pointing like the
mariner's needle to the pole. They indicate the quarter from which blow
the prevailing humid winds of any region of country; but in the moist and
dense forests of the interior, they are often equally luxuriant on every
side of the tree. The varying shape and robustness of boughs are thought
to offer a better means of finding the points of the compass; but none
but Indians and hunters grown gray in the woods, can profit by _their_
occult lessons. The attempts of Roland to draw instruction from them
served only to complete his confusion; and, by and by, giving over all
hope of succeeding through any exercise of skill or prudence, he left
the matter to fortune and his good horse, riding, in the obstinacy of
despair, withersoever the weary animal chose to bear him, without knowing
whether it might be afar from danger, or backwards into the vicinity of
the very enemies whom he had laboured so long to avoid.

As he advanced in this manner, he was once or twice inclined to suspect
that he was actually retracing his steps, and approaching the path by
which he had entered the depths of the wood; and on one occasion he was
almost assured that such was the fact by the peculiar appearance of a
brambly thicket, containing many dead trees, which he thought he had
noticed while following in confidence after the leading of Telie Doe. A
nearer approach to the place convinced him of his error, but awoke a new
hope in his mind, by showing him that he was drawing nigh the haunts of
men. The blazes of the axe were seen on the trees, running away in lines,
as if marked by the hands of the surveyor; those trees that were dead, he
observed, had been destroyed by girdling; and on the edge of the tangled
brake where they were most abundant, he noticed several stalks of maize,
the relics of some former harvest, the copse itself