A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE 25 



North American Indian's genius for fitting words 

 to things. 1 



Even to-day, windy and cold as it is, a butter- 

 fly passes over now and then (mostly red admi- 

 rals), and smaller insects flit carelessly about. 

 Insects are capable mountaineers, as I have often 

 found occasion to notice. The only time I was 

 ever on the sharp point of Mount Adams, where 

 my companion and I had barely room to stand 

 together, the air about our heads was black with 

 insects of all sorts and sizes, a veritable cloud ; 

 and when we unscrewed the Appalachian Club's 

 brass bottle to sign the roll of visitors, we found 

 that the signers immediately before us, after put- 

 ting down a date and their names, had added, 

 " Plenty of bugs." And surely I was never pes- 

 tered worse by black flies than once, years ago, on 

 this very summit of Moosilauke. All the hours 

 of a long, breathless, tropical July day they made 

 life miserable for me. Better a thousand times 

 such a frosty, man-compelling wind as I am now 

 fleeing from. 



Once off the ridge, I can loosen my hat and 

 sit down in comfort. The sun is good. How in- 



1 And if New Hampshire people will call the mountain 

 " Moose Hillock," as, alas, they will, then we have here another 

 proof of the degeneracy which follows the white man's addic- 

 tion to the punning habit,. 



