116 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



description, and you have me daguerreotyped in 

 your mind. Well, as I said, I started. For some 

 dozen rods I got on famously, and was congratulat- 

 ing myself with the thought of an easy transit, 

 when a root upon which I had put my right foot 

 gave way, and, plunging headlong into the mud, 

 I struck an attitude of petition ; while the frying- 

 pan and gridiron, flung off the oars and forward by 

 the movement, alighted upon my prostrated head. 

 An ejaculation, not exactly religious, escaped me, 

 and with a few desperate flounces I assumed once 

 more the perpendicular. Fishing the frying-pan 

 from the mud, and lashing the gridiron to my belt, 

 I made another start. It was hard work. The 

 most unnatural adjustment of weight upon my 

 back made it difiicult to ascertain just how far 

 behind me lay the centre of equilibrium. I found 

 where it did not lie, several times. Before I had 

 gone fifty rods, the camp-basket weighed one hun- 

 dred and twenty pounds. The pork-bag felt as 

 if it had several shoats in it, and the oar-blades 

 stuck out in the exact form of an X. If I went 

 one side of a tree, the oars would go the other 

 side. If I backed up, they would manage to get 

 entangled amid the brush. If I stumbled and 

 fell, the confounded things would come like a 

 goose-poke athwart my neck, pinning me down. 

 As I proceeded, the mud grew deeper, the roots 

 farther apart, and the blazed trees less frequent. 



