efore ravished by lumbermen, and presenting all manner of
obstacles to our awkward and incumbered pedestrianism. The woods were
largely pine, though yellow birch, beech, and maple were common. The
satisfaction of having a gun, should any game show itself, was the
chief compensation to those of us who were thus burdened. A partridge
would occasionally whir up before us, or a red squirrel snicker and
hasten to his den; else the woods appeared quite tenantless. The most
noted object was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of a great race,
which presided over a cluster of yellow birches, on the side of the
mountain.

About noon, we came out upon a long, shallow sheet of water which the
guide called Bloody-Moose Pond, from the tradition that a moose had
been slaughtered there many years before. Looking out over the silent
and lonely scene, his eye was the first to detect an object,
apparently feeding upon lily-pads, which our willing fancies readily
shaped into a deer. As we were eagerly waiting some movement to
confirm this impression, it lifted up its head, and lo! a great blue
heron. Seeing us approach, it spread its long wings and flew solemnly
across to a dead tree on the other side of the lake, enhancing rather
than relieving the loneliness and desolation that brooded over the
scene. As we proceeded, it flew from tree to tree in advance of us,
apparently loth to be disturbed in its ancient and solitary domain. In
the margin of the pond we found the pitcher-plant growing, and here
and there in the sand the closed gentian lifted up its blue head.

In traversing the shores of this wild, desolate lake, I was conscious
of a slight thrill of expectation, as if some secret of Nature might
here be revealed, or some rare and unheard-of game disturbed. There is
ever a lurking suspicion that the beginning of things is in some way
associated with water, and one may notice that in his private walks he
is led by a curious attraction to fetch all the springs and ponds in
his route, as if by them was the place for wonders and miracles to
happen. Once, while in advance of my companions, I saw, from a high
rock, a commotion in the water near the shore, but on reaching the
point found only the marks of a musquash.

Pressing on through the forest, after many adventures with pine-knots,
we reached, about the middle of the afternoon, our destination, Nate's
Pond,--a pretty sheet of water, lying like a silver mirror in the lap
of the moun