CAMPS AND TRAMPS ABOUT KTAADN 



By ARBOR ILEX. 



THAT noble mountain Ktaadn,* towering grand and peculiar 

 out of the vast and undulating forest of northern Maine, its 

 lofty head a pyramid with ragged apex as of a volcano, its ever 

 luminous face looking serenely southward and mirrored in a hundred 

 lakes, its huge body lying leagues along to the north and plowed 

 into gorges by the glaciers of aeons, — Ktaadn and its retinue of 

 magnificent domes, sole representatives of the primal continent, — all 

 these have been sung by the poet and portrayed by the painter. 



Imagine that you are fifty miles from any railway, twenty-five 

 from the nearest highway, and thirteen from a practicable footing for 

 any apparatus of transportation other than human legs ; that you 

 have come to stay a month ; that your party, some of whom are 

 not strong, is to be wholesomely and plentifully fed, and protected 

 against rain, frost, and probably snow ; that the forest affords no 

 other habitation or subsistence to you than to the wild animals about 

 you ; that game is uncertain, and fish, while large enough, indeed, 

 to delight the sportsman, are not plentiful enough to insure subsist- 

 ence ; — fancy this, and you will indeed have come short of a lumber- 

 man's idea of roughing it ; but you will have put yourself in a puzzle 

 over two propositions — ist, as the woods provide little, much must 

 be carried in ; 2d, as little can be carried in, the woods must furnish 

 much. The resultant of these opposed ideas may be expressed by 



•The orthography — Ktaadn — is not that of the maps; the Maine State College 

 people, who ought to be allowed to name their own mountains, insist upon "Ktahdin." 

 But those eminent authorities, Thoreau and J. Hammond Trumbull, — the latter our 

 best expert in Indian nomenclature, — prescribe the spelling here adopted. 



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