Camps and Tramps About Ktaadn. 807 



symptoms of collapse, we abandoned the jumper and sent the team 

 back. Meanwhile, one horse of the other jumper having distributed 

 most of his shoes and gone out of service, his companion dragged 

 the vehicle alone up many steep pitches, and was only dismissed, 

 with our blessing, when the jumper had left its starboard runner on 

 a rock. So we had a chance to find out how wonderfully easier it is 

 to walk light over bad roads than to lug twenty pounds of baggage. 

 The guides spent the afternoon in "backing "in our wraps and a 

 day's provisions. We dined by the dam at the foot of the little 

 lake, — one of the many difficult but unremunerative works built a 

 few years ago to "drive" logs, — and got into a temporary camp for 

 the night. 



The bean-hole, that principal base in camp topography, is made 

 large enough to take in an iron pot ; and when the hole is heated to 

 a cherry-red by a big internal fire, and when the pot is filled with 

 parboiled, yellow-eyed beans and a cube of pork with fat and lean in 

 proper strata, and when the pot is set in the hole for the night and 

 covered with coals, then begins a beneficent tissue-making alchemy 

 which transmutes the humbler food into ambrosia fit for Mount 

 Ktaadn, if not for Mount Olympus. 



The fishing along shore now began to abound chiefly in chub, 

 and Don Gifaro, the epicure, was beginning contemptuously to dub 

 this ever-ready-for-breakfast fish as " Ktaadn trout" while at the 

 same time Don Gifaro, the sportsman, was silently determining 

 where the real "fish" lay. All in good time, an ancient and dilapi- 

 dated raft was discovered, and as soon mounted by the Don, I )e 

 Woods, and La Rose, who poled and paddled it with no end of work 

 to the previously determined spot. After an hour's fishing, La Rose's 

 bare hands taking the place of a landing-net, they returned laden 

 with trout; seven fish weighed over ten pounds, and one was a 

 three-pounder, twenty inches long. Meanwhile, a guide had shot a 

 brace of partridges, and our style of living was rapidly assuming the 

 Madison Square type. I give all concerned th< benefit of two expe 

 riences I acquired this day : first, don't lay a trout in a frying-pan 

 of red-hot fat with your fingers; second, when you do, get a distin 

 guished artist to paint them with white lead and turpentine; it 

 prejudices one against a warm tone in art, though the ultimate 

 repose of the composition is charming. 



