, now comes muffling down upon us and into us like fog. At night
more mutton, flesh to flesh, down with it, not too much, and there are
the stars shining through the cedar plumes and branches above our beds.

_July 7._ Rather weak and sickish this morning, and all about a piece of
bread. Can scarce command attention to my best studies, as if one
couldn't take a few days' saunter in the Godful woods without
maintaining a base on a wheat-field and gristmill. Like caged parrots we
want a cracker, any of the hundred kinds--the remainder biscuit of a
voyage around the world would answer well enough, nor would the
wholesomeness of saleratus biscuit be questioned. Bread without flesh
is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also
may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I
need,--not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered
to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any
particular kind of nourishment. That this may be accomplished is
manifest, as far as bodily welfare is concerned, in the lives of people
of other climes. The Eskimo, for example, gets a living far north of the
wheat line, from oily seals and whales. Meat, berries, bitter weeds, and
blubber, or only the last, for months at a time; and yet these people
all around the frozen shores of our continent are said to be hearty,
jolly, stout, and brave. We hear, too, of fish-eaters, carnivorous as
spiders, yet well enough as far as stomachs are concerned, while we are
so ridiculously helpless, making wry faces over our fare, looking
sheepish in digestive distress amid rumbling, grumbling sounds that
might well pass for smothered baas. We have a large supply of sugar, and
this evening it occurred to me that these belligerent stomachs might
possibly, like complaining children, be coaxed with candy. Accordingly
the frying-pan was cleansed, and a lot of sugar cooked in it to a sort
of wax, but this stuff only made matters worse.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary
much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth
and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives
are one perpetual wash. And, as we have seen, the squirrels in these
resiny woods keep themselves clean in some mysterious way; not a hair is
sticky, though they handle the gummy cones, and glide about apparently
without care. The birds, too, are clea