A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 61 



Then, with the long, curving branches of the spruce 

 stuck thickly around three sides of the bed, and curv<= 

 ing over and uniting their tops above it, a shelter was 

 formed that would keep out the cold and the snow, 

 and that would catch and retain the warmth of the fire. 

 Rolled in his blanket in such a nest. Uncle Nathan 

 had passed hundreds of the most frigid winter nights, i 



One day we made an excursion of three miles 

 through the woods to Bald Mountain, following a dim 

 trail. We saw, as we filed silently along, plenty of 

 signs of caribou, deer, and bear, but were not blessed 

 with a siofht of either of the animals themselves. I 

 noticed that Uncle Nathan, in looking through the 

 woods, did not hold his head as we did, but thrust it 

 slightly forward, and peered under the branches like 

 a deer or other wild creature. 



The summit of Bald Mountain was the most im- 

 pressive mountain-top I had ever seen, mainly, per- 

 haps, because it was one enormous crown of nearly 

 naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental, 

 eternal look which granite alone has. One seemed to 

 be face to face with the gods of the fore-world. Like 

 an atom, like a breath of to-day, we were suddenly 

 confronted by abysmal geologic time, — the eternities 

 past and the eternities to come. The enormous cleav- 

 age of the rocks, the appalling cracks and fissures, the 

 rent bowlders, the smitten granite floors, gave one a 

 new sense of the power of heat and frost. In one 

 place we noticed several deep parallel grooves, made 

 by the old glaciers. In the depressions on the sum- 

 mit there was a hard, black, peaty-like soil that looked 

 indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of this 

 mould, that might have come from the moon or the 

 interplanetary spaces, were growing mountain cran- 



