AN AMATEUR IN THE NORTH WOODS. 163 



bidding defiance to the perils and hardships of the wilderness. 

 But the miles were unconscionably long. I had prided my- 

 self somewhat on my ability as a pedestrian, and had thought 

 lightly of the eleven miles before us ; but by the time we had 

 accomplished one half of them, it seemed to me that each mile 

 was a league in length. And then the path how shall I 

 describe it ? I had thought the road by which we had reached 

 the clearing in our rear as bad as road could be ; but this path 

 which we were now following was yet worse. If the reader 

 will imagine an almost unlimited amount of logs, rocks, mud, 

 stumps, and mosquitoes, mixed together hap-hazard, and dis- 

 tributed miscellaneously along a line eleven miles in length, 

 he will by this means obtain a possible conception of the road 

 on which we plodded all day. 



Thanks to a good bed, and a sound night's sleep, I rose on 

 the ensuing morning with no diminution of spirits, and with 

 my physical condition quite unimpaired. A little stiffness in 

 the joints of the hips and knees was all the trace which re- 

 mained of my yesterday's fatigue ; and even that wore away 

 with the first hour's exercise. 



At the outlet of the long chain of lakes which stretches far 

 into the heart of this region, we were obliged to wait a few 

 hours for the arrival of the boat which we had engaged, and 

 which was absent on the upper lakes. The time of our delay 

 was profitably employed in taking a fine string of speckled 

 trout from the stream, which here debouches from the lower 

 extremity of the lake. There are few sensations in nature 

 more satisfactory than the gentle titillation of the wrist and 

 elbow, ensuing from the bite of a fine trout ; and when the 

 struggle is over and you have him safe in your basket, though 

 you are not indued with the poetic temperament, and may 

 not have an atom of sentiment in your organization, you can 

 hardly suppress a sensation of regret at having destroyed a 

 creature of such rare beauty. 



So at least, I think, as I fill my basket ; but Newhouse, I 

 am sorry to say, does not share in my weakness. His ali- 

 mentive instincts are stronger than his idealic ; and while I am 

 half disposed to sentimentalize over our prey, he extricates a 



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