THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 



itive woods, the very bigness of the mountain baffles 

 one. It is all mountain; whichever way you turn 

 and one turns sometimes in such cases before he 

 knows it the foot finds a steep and rugged ascent. 

 The eye is of little service ; one must be sure of 

 his bearings and push boldly on and up. One is 

 not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy beast, looking 

 for the animal's head; or even like a much smaller 

 and much less nimble creature, he may waste his 

 time and steps, and think he has reached the head 

 when he is only upon the rump. Hence I ques- 

 tioned our host, who had several times made the 

 ascent, closely. Larkins laid his old felt hat upon 

 the table, and, placing one hand upon one side of it 

 and the other upon the other, said: "There Slide 

 lies, between the two forks of the stream, just as my 

 hat lies between my two hands. David will go with 

 you to the forks, and then you will push right on up." 

 But Larkins was not right, though he had traversed 

 all those mountains many times over. The peak we 

 were about to set out for did not lie between the 

 forks, but exactly at the head of one of them; the 

 beginnings of the stream are in the very path of the 

 slide, as we afterward found. We broke camp early 

 in the morning, and with our blankets strapped to 

 our backs and rations in our pockets for two days, 

 set out along an ancient and in places an obliterated 

 bark road that followed and crossed and recrossed 

 the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but 

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