PEPACTON 



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 

 resistance 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 shoulders ; you thus get an equal bear- 

 ing 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 bark- 

 peelers had stripped ten or more years before. As 

 they had left the bark there, and as hemlock 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 

 8 



