28 THE Aroostook Woobs. 

hard travelling; a course due east hits your outward track, 
and so it is all around the points of the compass. Getting lost 
comes mostly from getting excited about it. Always have 
your compass where it cannot be lost. After some practice 
and much observation you can determine almost at a glance, as 
the Indian does, which is north and south. (I refer to 
this in other pages). You learn to tell by the trees and their 
branches, the rocks and mosses. 
You can find where the sun is by the point of your knife- 
blade, held perpendicular upon your thumb nail. Twirl it 
slowly around and it is a dark day indeed when it will not cast 
a slight shadow from the sun upon your nail. Then by 
consulting your watch you find you are all right, after coolly 
thinking it all-over. The best of woodsmen needs his com- 
pass on a dark day. Hardly any one, but an Indian, gets 
along entirely without it. Even he has strayed before now, 
according to an old story, but would not admit it. When the 
white man met him and asked him if he were lost, he straight- 
ened up and answered, ‘* Oh no! Indian no lost, wigwam he 
lost sure.” 
Often getting astray, I have found myself going exactly 
opposite to my right course. This I could not believe until 
referrring to the compass; even then doubting if it could be 
correct or was working right. But remember, if a fairly good 
one, it is always right, and we must always go by its pointing 
even though it seems all wrong according to our judgment. 
Again we would say, keep your reckoning and you need not 
be far astray. You are not often far away from the woods- 
man’s axe and old lumber roads, though they may be well 
grown up again, you can yet trace them. You come to some 
small brook; this runs to a larger, usually, then to river or 
