hy brutes following their prey. But there was one source of
profound satisfaction,--the catamount had been killed. Mr. Colvin,
the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his
last official report to the State. Whether he despatched him with a
theodolite or a barometer does not matter: he is officially dead, and
none of the travelers can kill him any more. Yet he has served them a
good turn.

I knew that catamount well. One night when we lay in the bogs of the
South Beaver Meadow, under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serene midnight
was parted by a wild and humanlike cry from a neighboring mountain.
"That's a cat," said the guide. I felt in a moment that it was the voice
of "modern cultchah." "Modern culture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most
impressive period,--"modern culture is a child crying in the wilderness,
and with no voice but a cry." That describes the catamount exactly. The
next day, when we ascended the mountain, we came upon the traces of this
brute,--a spot where he had stood and cried in the night; and I confess
that my hair rose with the consciousness of his recent presence, as it
is said to do when a spirit passes by.

Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in a dark, drenched, and
howling wilderness can impart, that I experienced; but I thought what
a satire upon my present condition was modern culture, with its plain
thinking and high living! It was impossible to get much satisfaction
out of the real and the ideal,--the me and the not-me. At this time
what impressed me most was the absurdity of my position looked at in the
light of modern civilization and all my advantages and acquirements. It
seemed pitiful that society could do absolutely nothing for me. It
was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that it would now be profitable
to exchange all my possessions for the woods instinct of the most
unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value of the "culture" that
blunts the natural instincts.

It began to be a question whether I could hold out to walk all night;
for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined that a spectre was
walking by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only recently
eaten a hearty luncheon: but the pangs of hunger got hold on me when
I thought that I should have no supper, no breakfast; and, as the
procession of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew hungrier
and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, and wasting away:
already I seemed t