160 The Wilderness Hunter 



windfalls or great stretches of burned forest, black 

 and barren wastes, we balanced and leaped from log 

 to log, sometimes twenty or thirty feet above the 

 ground; and when such a stretch was on a steep 

 hillside, and especially if the logs were enveloped 

 in a thick second growth of small evergreens, the 

 footing was very insecure, and the danger from a 

 fall considerable. Our packs added greatly to our 

 labor, catching on the snags and stubs; and where 

 a grove of thick-growing young spruces or balsams 

 had been burned, the stiff and brittle twigs pricked 

 like so much coral. Most difficult of all were the 

 dry watercourses, choked with alders, where the in- 

 tertwined tangle of tough stems formed an almost 

 literally impenetrable barrier to our progress. 

 Nearly every movement leaping, climbing, swing- 

 ing one's self up with one's hands, bursting through 

 stiff bushes, plunging into and out of bogs was one 

 of strain and exertion ; the fatigue was tremendous, 

 and steadily continued, so that in an hour every 

 particle of clothing I had on was wringing wet with 

 sweat. 



At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite 

 of lunch a chunk of cold frying-pan bread, which 

 was all we had. 



While at lunch I made a capture. I was sitting 

 on a great stone by the edge of the brook, idly gaz- 

 ing at a water-wren which had come up from a 

 short flight I can call it nothing else underneath 



