Camps and Tramps About Ktaadn. 809 



its flanks dense with primeval hard-woods, the green interspersed 

 with daily deepening red and yellow, and its summit a thicket of 

 evergreens. Twenty miles away on the right, and most beautiful of 

 all, the Traveler, — a flattened dome, rising higher than the loftiest 

 peak of the Catskills, grand and symmetrical indeed, but lovely, as I 

 see it far away in the soft, rosy sunset, when Ktaadn has put on the 

 darker robes of evening. Such appears to be the view from our 

 camp-shore ; but as I look over my shoulder at the canvas of 

 my companion, I realize how inadequately it can be described in 

 words. 



Our life, pleasant as was its routine by day, was not mere 



THE TRAVELER, FROM THE SOUTH SHORE OF THE I.AKE. 



sketching, fishing, and tramping. The evening meal, with its liberal 

 fare and its rousing appetites, its jokes and its relation of the day's 

 experiences, and then the lying at ease before the glowing camp- 

 fire, with its pipes and punch and stories, and the dropping off of 

 one and another in sweet, healthful sleep, without the formality of 

 "retiring" — these are scenes of which the memories will last like 

 those of Ktaadn itself. 



On the bright, clear morning of the 14th, Don Cathedra, Rubens, 

 and De Woods, with two guides bearing supplies, penetrated the 

 trackless wilderness of Mount Turner, — a tangling and difficult 

 progress through primeval forests, to gain what the Don had imag- 

 ined to be the grandest view of Ktaadn. While the rest of us were 

 consoling ourselves for our loneliness, about dark, with a rice pud 

 ding composed of two raisins to one grain of rice, and a ravishing 

 sauce, — a thoughtful study by La Rose, — up rose 1 )<• Woods in our 

 midst, pale as an apparition. He had preceded and lost his party, 



tided a peak of Turner, and being without provisions, descended 



