feeling his oats. When Iglesias and I came to embark, I, the novice, perhaps a little intoxicated with wintergreen-berries, stepped jauntily into the laden boat. Birch, alas! failed me. He tilted; he turned; he took in Penobscot, — took it in by the quart, by the gallon, by the barrel; he would have sunk without mercy, had not Iglesias and Cancut succeeded in laying hold of a rock and restoring equilibrium. I could not have believed it of Birch. I was disappointed, and in consternation; and if I had not known how entirely it was Birch’s fault that everybody was ducked and everybody now had a wet blanket, I should have felt personally foolish. I punished myself for another’s fault and my own inexperience by assuming the wet blankets as my share at the next carry. I suppose few of my readers imagine how many pounds of water a blanket can absorb.
After camps at Katahdin any residence in the woods without a stupendous mountain before the door would have been tame. It must have been this, and not any wearying of sylvan life, that made us hasten to reach the outermost log-house at the Millinoket carry before nightfall. The sensation of house and in-door life would be a new one, and so satisfying in itself that we should not demand beautiful objects to meet our first blink of awakening eyes.
An hour before sunset, Cancut steered us toward a beach, and pointed out a vista in the woods, evidently artificial, evidently a road trodden by feet and hoofs,
