November — Our Situation. 19 



ception. The old dread of the wilderness had retained 

 more of the early experience of man, when he found 

 himself, in his weakness and ignorance, in the presence 

 of natural forces that appalled but did not charm his 

 imagination. 



The rivulet led us into the densest wood once more. 

 Our easiest path, but a wet one, lay in the very bed of 

 the stream itself, and we floundered along, guided by 

 twilight glimmers on the fortunately shallow water. In 

 this way we proceeded for a long time with considerable 

 rapidity, and might have gone on until night fell in 

 blackness, had we not met with an insurmountable dif- 

 ficulty in a sudden alteration of geological character, 

 which made the rivulet no longer a practicable path. It 

 became closed in between precipitous rocks, and fell in a 

 loud cascade into the depths of a ravine below. Nothing 

 remained of daylight but a feeble grayness in the sky, 

 every near object was invisible, and after some ineffectual 

 attempts to get round the rocky sides of the watercourse 

 I determined to abandon, for that night, all further effort 

 to reach the Val Ste. Veronique. Most fortunately it did 

 not rain, and we were in a perfectly sheltered situation. 

 The constant exercise of our long march (we had been 

 walking for seven hours without intermission) had kept 

 us hitherto safe from cold, but we could not prudently 

 rest without a fire. I had matches and a newspaper in 

 my pocket ; we collected a heap of the driest leaves and 

 twigs, and soon had the satisfaction of illuminating the 

 little dell with a cheerful blaze of light, that brought 

 the rocks and nearest trees into the most vigorous relief 



