52 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 



whenever I looked down upon that treacherous 

 wilderness, I thought with misgivings of those 

 two friends groping their way there, and would 

 have given something to have known how it 

 fared with them. Their concern was probably 

 less than my own, because they were more 

 ignorant of what was before them. Then there 

 was just a slight shadow of a fear in my mind 

 that I might have been in error about some 

 points of the geography I had pointed out to 

 them. But all was well, and the victory was 

 won according to the campaign which I had 

 planned. When we saluted our friends upon 

 their own doorstep a week afterward, the 

 wounds were raarly all healed and the rents all 

 mended. 



When one is on a mountain-top he spends 

 most of the time in looking at the show he has 

 been at such pains to see. About every hour 

 we would ascend the rude lookout to take a 

 fresh observation. With a glass I could see 

 my native hills forty miles away to the north- 

 west. I was now upon the back of the horse, 

 yea, upon the highest point of his shoulders, 

 which had so many times attracted my atten- 

 tion as a boy. We could look along his bal- 

 sam-covered back to his rump from which the 

 eye glanced away down into the forests of the 

 Neversink, and on the other hand plump down 

 into the gulf where his head was grazing or 

 drinking. During the day there was a grand 

 procession, of thunder-clouds filing along over 

 the Northern Catskills, and letting down veils 



