A SUMMER BOATING 



TRIP 11 



the mountain, and beside it, underneath birches and 

 hemlocks, I improvised my hearthstone. In sleeping 

 on the ground it is a great advantage to have a back- 

 log; it braces and supports you, and it is a bedfellow 

 that will not grumble when, in the middle of the night, 

 you crowd sharply up against it. It serves to keep in 

 the warmth, also. A heavy stone or other point de re- 

 sistance at your feet is also a help. Or, better still, 

 scoop out a little place in the earth, a few inches deep, 

 so as to admit your body from your hips to your shoul- 

 ders; you thus get an equal bearing the whole length 

 of you. I am told the Western hunters and guides do 

 this. On the same principle, the sand makes a good 

 bed, and the snow. You make a mould in which you 

 fit nicely. My berth that night was between two logs 

 that the barkpeelers had stripped ten or more years 

 before. As they had left the bark there, and as hem- 

 lock bark makes excellent fuel, I had more reasons 

 than one to be grateful to them. 



In the morning I felt much refreshed, and as if the 

 night had tided me over the bar that threatened to stay 

 my progress. If I can steer clear of skimmed milk, I 

 said, I shall now finish the voyage of fifty miles to 

 Hancock with increasing pleasure. 



When one breaks camp in the morning, he turns 

 back again and again to see what he has left. Surely., 

 he feels, he has forgotten something; what is it? But 

 it is only his own sad thoughts and musings he has left, 

 the ^fragment of his life he has lived there. Where he 

 hung his coat on the tree, where he slept on the boughs, 

 where he made his coffee or broiled his trout over the 

 coals, where he drank again and again at the little 

 brown pool in the spring run, where he looked long 



