144 IN CAMP AND CANOE 



sunshine and shadow, which give ever- varying beauty to the sides 

 and summits of the mountains ; in the bracing atmosphere which 

 environs him ; in the odor of the pine and hemlock and spruce and 

 cedar forests, which is sweeter to the senses of the true woodsman 

 than all the artificially compounded odors which impregnate the 

 boudoirs of artificial life ; in the spray of the waterfall ; in the 

 grace and curve and dash of the swift-rushing torrent ; in the whirl 

 of the foaming eddy ; in the transparent depths of the shady pool 

 where, in midsummer, the speckled trout and silver salmon 'most 

 do congregate' ; in the revived appetite ; in the repose which comes 

 to him while reclining upon his sweet-smelling couch of hemlock 

 boughs ; in the hush of the woods where moon and stars shine in 

 upon him through his open tent or bark - covered shanty ; in the 

 morning-song of the robin ; in the rapid coursing blood, quickened 

 by the pure, unstinted mountain air which imparts to the lungs the 

 freshness and vigor of its own vitality ; in the crackling of the 

 newly kindled camp-fire ; in the restored health, and in the one thou- 

 sand other indescribable and delightful realities and recollections of 

 the angler's camp life on lake or river during the season when it is 

 right to go a-fishing. It is these, and not alone or chiefly the mere 

 art of catching fish, which render the gentle art a source of ever- 

 growing pleasure." 



Dearly, too, do I love to linger again and again over 

 that magnificent deification of Nature by my eloquent 

 friend Mr. W. H. H. Murray, in his introductory chap- 

 ter upon out-door life, to his book on Lake Champlain 

 and its Shores. It is a beautiful prose poem in classic 

 English, and as one reads the productions of this mar- 

 vellous mind that " hangs odes on hawthorns and ele- 

 gies on brambles," he seems to be breathing into mind 

 and body " the cool, pure air, pungent with gummy 

 odors and strong with the smell of the sod and the 

 rootlaced mould of the underlying earth"; and if he 

 be an angler or hunter or has ever done any camp- 

 ing out in the woods, he feels like an impatient 



