Deer-Hunting on the An Sable. 237 



starving mosses strove to cover up the thankless sand, but nothing 

 seemed to prosper in it but the trees, for which it held mysterious 

 sustenance where their deep roots could reach it. But even they 

 made an unlovely forest. The great fires that sweep across this re- 

 gion leave hideous scars behind them. One sees for miles and miles 

 the sandy plain covered with the charred trunks of the fallen forest. 

 Great lofty pines, whose stems are blackened from the root as high 

 as the fire has reached, — huge, distorted, and disfigured. — stand 

 gloomily above their moldering brethren, their white skeletons ex- 

 tending their dead and broken arms, in mute testimony of lost grace 

 and beauty. Nothing could be more desolate than these " burnings," 

 as they are called. They present an aspect of such utter, hopeless 

 dreariness, and such complete and painful solitude, as one might 

 imagine to exist only within the frozen circle of the Arctic. 



The rain continued and wet us until we began to get on good 

 terms with it, as if we were Alaskans or Aleuts, and rather liked it. 

 Besides, we got stirred up over the deer-tracks in the sand. They 

 were very numerous and fresh, and one or two rifles were loaded in 

 hopes of a shot at one " on the wing." None came in sight, how- 

 ever, and the undergrowth and scrub-oaks effectually kept them 

 from our view. 



At half-past one o'clock, after a few premonitory symptoms in 

 the shape of fences, of which the purpose was obscure, since they 

 hedged in nothing, and looked as if they had only been put up for 

 fun or practice, we came suddenly to the edge of a basin or depres- 

 sion in the plateau over which we had been driving, and there, 

 beneath us, lay Thompson's. Here in the midst of the wilderness 

 was a prosperous, healthy-looking farm, actually yielding vegetables 

 and cereals, and having about it all manner of horses, cows, pigs, 

 hay-stacks, barns, dogs to bark, pumpkins, and all the other estab- 

 lished characteristics of a well-regulated farm. We rattled down the 

 declivity to the house and met with a hearty welcome, most of the 

 party having known Thompson for years. He is a bluff, hearty 

 backwoodsman, whom years of uninterrupted prosperity have made 

 rich. He owns thousands of acres of timber-land, and his house is 

 known far and wide as the best hotel in Michigan. Mrs. Thomp- 

 son is not exactly a backwoodswoman ; indeed, she is quite as much 

 of a surprise to one as is the place itself. She is an excellent lady, 



