THE ROAD TO MUDDY POND 



from some retired statesman, but these 

 are not beasts of our frozen forests. 



In one place was another tropical sug- 

 gestion that was a bit startling. This was 

 the cast skin of a snake that must have 

 been four * inches in diameter. It was 

 only the white bark of a dead birch that 

 had fallen and rotted, as to its heart- 

 wood, all away, but the tougher bark re- 

 mained, dangling in white folds just as a 

 snake's skin does when cast. 



But this is not the place to see the 

 swamp cedars at their best. You are on 

 their gloomy side now. Toward the vivi- 

 fying sun they turn every cheerful atom 

 within them and as you look down on 

 them as the sun does from some near by 

 southern ridge you get the full effect of 

 their close-set masses of living green and 

 realize the enormous virility within them. 

 It seems to me that our toughest tree 

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