16 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



they are so unlike. But I am willing to give my 

 reasons of preference for the Adirondacks. The 

 fact is, nothing could induce me to visit Maine. 

 If I was going east at all, I should keep on, nor 

 stop until I reached the Provinces. I could never 

 bring my mind to pass a month in Maine, with 

 the North Woods within forty-eight hours of me. 

 I will tell you why. Go where you will, in 

 Maine, the lumbermen have been before you ; and 

 lumbermen are the curse and scourge of the wil- 

 derness. Wherever the axe sounds, the pride and 

 beauty of the forest disappear. A lumbered dis- 

 trict is the most dreary and dismal region the eye 

 of man ever beheld. The mountains are not 

 merely shorn of trees, but from base to summit 

 fires, kindled by accident or malicious purpose, 

 have swept their sides, leaving the blackened 

 rocks exposed to the eye, and here and there a few 

 unsightly trunks leaning in all directions, from 

 which all the branches and green foliage have been 

 burnt away. The streams and trout-pools are 

 choked with saw-dust, and filled with slabs and 

 logs. The rivers are blockaded with "booms" 

 and lodged timber, stamped all over the ends with 

 the owner's "mark." Every eligible site for a 

 camp has been appropriated; and bones, offal, 

 horse-manure, and all the debris of a deserted 

 lumbermen's village is strewn around, offensive 

 both to eye and nose. The hills and shores are 



