Our supply of each was very
limited, and we were anxious to save a little of both, to relieve the
diet of trout to which we looked forward.
At an early hour we reached the rock where we had parted with the
guide, and looked around us into the dense, trackless woods with many
misgivings. To strike out now on our own hook, where the way was so
blind and after the experience we had just had, was a step not to be
carelessly taken. The tops of these mountains are so broad, and a
short distance in the woods seems so far, that one is by no means
master of the situation after reaching the summit. And then there are
so many spurs and offshoots and changes of direction, added to the
impossibility of making any generalization by the aid of the eye, that
before one is aware of it he is very wide of his mark.
I remembered now that a young farmer of my acquaintance had told me
how he had made a long day's march through the heart of this region,
without path or guide of any kind, and had hit his mark squarely. He
had been barkpeeling in Callikoon,--a famous country for
barkpeeling,--and, having got enough of it, he desired to reach his
home on Dry Brook without making the usual circuitous journey between
the two places.
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