JACK-O'-LANTERN 



the canoe shifts from shoulder to shoulder, 

 but our small burdens were hardly set down 

 in three and a half hours of dead slogging. 

 Climbing the arid slopes that hot June day, 

 ridge beyond ridge, the old man, with his 

 pitiful twenty-five or thirty pounds, felt 

 more and more like Christian on the hill 

 Difficulty. As I recall the ancient wood- 

 cut, you could see no more than a pair of 

 bowed and staggering legs beneath the im- 

 mense bundle of his sins; the pilgrim was 

 headed away from you and thus were you 

 baffled in the vital enquiry whether his 

 tump-line took the weight upon chest or 

 forehead! 



Only on the return could we spare a look 

 at the twin mountain chains trending north- 

 ward in vast curves, with precipices fall- 

 ing sheer to the lower slopes of the broad 

 spruce-clad Valley, scored here or there 

 with rock slides but untouched by the ax. 

 Not many miles below our crossing the 

 hills draw in, and the river plunges more 

 than a thousand feet in cascades and 

 furious rapids through so wild a gorge that 

 none can follow it. i\fter this turbulence 

 the stream finds rest in a canyon where 

 stately trees, and brooks leaping from the 

 rim, give something whereby to measure 

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