THE MARCH. 55 



Perhaps some of us would thus be earned out of the 

 woods. He left New York as full of hope as myself; 

 and here he met his end. Shall I be thus borne 

 back to my friends ? It is a little singular that he 

 was always nervously afraid of fire-arms, and car- 

 ried this pistol solely as a protection against wild 

 beasts ; and yet, he fell by his own hand. He never 

 could see a man walking in the streets with a gun in 

 his hand, without stepping to the door to inquire if 

 it were loaded. Poor man ! it was a sad place to die 

 in ; for his body had to be carried over thirty miles 

 on men's shoulders, before they came to a public 

 road. 



The exhausting march, however, soon drove these 

 sad thoughts from our minds, and we strained for- 

 ward — now treading over a springy marsh — now 

 stooping and crawling like lame iguanas, through a 

 swamp of spruce trees, and anon following the path 

 made by deer and moose, as they came from the 

 mountains to the streams, or climbing around a cata- 

 ract, until, at length, we reached Lake Golden, per- 

 fectly embosomed amid the gigantic mountains, and 

 looking for all the world like an innocent child sleep- 

 ing in a robber's embrace. Awfully savage and wild 



