28 JOCK'S LAKE. 



reverent love to its wooded shrines and placid lakes and 

 changeful streams, and sends them forth again rich in 1 1n- 

 good gifts it holds in store for the forest-loving in heart. 

 But a blasting curse has rented upon every profane attempt 

 to hew down the temples and erect in their stead the 

 granary. The law not of New York but of Nature has 

 set apart this wildemesfl irrevocably to purposes which Mud 

 little recognition in the marls of trade and the nece-.iiies of 

 a teeming population struggling for subsistence. 



So that this road had. by disu-i-. pretty much grown over 

 again, and was now little better, they told us, than "aeom 

 fort able squirrel track." We found afterwards that the 

 squirrel who had travelled that track must have possessed 

 a very sound constitution. 



Aft era dinner of bread and milk we set forth, we five and 

 our two guides walking in light-weight costume, and 

 Wilkinson bringing up the rear with his wagon and twccai 

 like horses. They had nobly spent their lives in trying to 

 civili/.e this region and in doing so had learned to clamber 

 over boulders like a goat and to climb a sharp acclivity like 

 a hod carrier up a ladder. 1 didn't observe that they had 

 claws, but how they otherwise could so well climb and 

 descend and cling, I could not well conceive. The unedu- 

 cated horse would have been utterly helpless in their p 



"Is n't this glorious. ho\s!" said Thomp-on, as we left 

 the little clearing and, after walking a little way up the 

 river bank along a row-path, plunged into the foreM. 



"Glorious! " responded a chorus of four voices. 



"That very wet rain has at least cleared the air. and 



