IN THE CATSKILLS 



the wind was fitful and petulant, and I predicted 

 rain. What a forest solitude our obstructed and 

 dilapidated wood-road led us through ! five miles of 

 primitive woods before we came to the forks, three 

 miles before we came to the " burnt shanty," a name 

 merely, no shanty there now for twenty-five years 

 past. The ravages of the barkpeelers were still vis- 

 ible, now in a space thickly strewn with the soft 

 and decayed trunks of hemlock-trees, and overgrown 

 with wild cherry, then in huge mossy logs scattered 

 through the beech and maple woods. Some of these 

 logs were so soft and mossy that one could sit or 

 recline upon them as upon a sofa. 



But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquiz- 

 ing in such musical tones there amid the moss-cov- 

 ered rocks and boulders. How clean it looked, what 

 purity! Civilization corrupts the streams as it cor- 

 rupts the Indian; only in such remote woods can 

 you now see a brook in all its original freshness and 

 beauty. Only the sea and the mountain forest brook 

 are pure; all between is contaminated more or less 

 by the work of man. An ideal trout brook was this, 

 now hurrying, now loitering, now deepening around 

 a great boulder, now gliding evenly over a pavement 

 of green-gray stone and pebbles ; no sediment or 

 stain of any kind, but white and sparkling as snow- 

 water, and nearly as cool. Indeed, the water of all 

 this Catskill region is the best in the world. For the 

 first few days, one feels as if he could almost live on 

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