A TASTE OF MAIM: BIRCB. «1 



Then, with the long, curving branches of the spruce 



stuck thickly around three sides of thb bed, and curv- 

 ing over and uniting their tops above it, a shelter \ 

 formed that would keep out the cold and th< 

 and that would catch and retain the warmth of the tin- 

 Rolled in his blanket in such a nest, Uncle Nathan 

 aad passed hundreds of the most frigid winter Bights 



One day we made an excursion of three miles 

 through the woods to Bald Mountain, following a dim 

 trail. We saw, as we filed silently along, plenty of 

 signs of caribou, deer, and bear, but were not bless 

 with a sio-ht of either of the animals themselv< 

 noticed that Uncle Nathan, in looking through the 

 woods, did not hold his head as we did, but thrust it 

 slightly forward, and peered under the branches like 

 a deer or other wild creature. 



The summit of Bald Mountain was the most im- 

 pressive mountain-top I had ever seen, mainly, ] i r- 

 naps, because it was one enormous crown of nearly 

 naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental, 

 eternal look which granite alone has. One seemed i 

 be face to face with the gods of the fore-world. Like 

 an atom, like a breath of to-day, we were suddenly 

 confronted by abysmal geologic time, — the eternil 

 past and the eternities to come. The enormous cleav- 

 age of the rocks, the appalling cracks and fissun s, the 

 rent bowlders, the smitten granite floors, gave one c 

 new sense of the power of heat and frost. En one 

 place we noticed several deep parallel grooves, made 

 by the old glaciers. In the depressions on the sum- 

 mit there was a hard, black, peaty-like soil that loo. 

 indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of I 

 mould, that might have come from the moon or the 

 interplanetary spaces, were growing mountain craft- 



