BIRCH BROWSINGS. 183 



breakfast that morning. Our supply of each was very 

 limited, and we were anxious to save a little of both, 

 to relieve the diet of trout to which we looked forward. 



At an early hour we reached the rock where we had 

 parted with the guide, and looked around us into the 

 dense, trackless woods with many misgivings. To 

 strike out now on our own hook, where the way was so 

 blind and after the experience we had just had, was a 

 step not to be carelessly taken. The tops of these 

 mountains are so broad, and a short distance in the 

 woods seems so far, that one is by no means master of 

 the situation after reaching the summit. And then 

 there are so many spurs and offshoots and changes 

 of direction, added to the impossibility of making any 

 generalization by the aid of the eye, that before one 

 is aware of it he is very wide of his mark. 



I remembered now that a young farmer of my 

 acquaintance had told me how he had made a long 

 day's march through the heart of this region, without 

 path or guide of any kind, and had hit his mark 

 squarely. He had been bark-peeling in Collikoon, — 

 a famous country for bark, — and, having got enough 

 of it, he desired to reach his home on Dry Brook with- 

 out making the usual circuitous journey between the 

 two places. To do this necessitated a march of ten or 

 twelve miles across several ranges of mountains and 

 through an unbroken forest, — a hazardous under- 

 taking in which no one would join him. Even the old 

 hunters who were familiar with the ground dissuaded 



