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 I 

 back made it difficult to ascertain just how far \ 

 behind me lay the centre of equilibrium. I found I 

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

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

 dred and twenty pounds. The pork-bag felt as \ 

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

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

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

 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. 



